Fiction
BOWLING WITH DRACULA by Justin Gibson
The first thing we discovered was that vampires loved contracts. Well, no, sorry, I guess the first thing we discovered was the vampires themselves — that they’re real. We figured it out pretty quick, as pets went missing; as we started to get the heebie-jeebies when twilight flooded our backyards a cool blue; as pale strangers stood outside our windows in the middle of the night and asked if we’d let them in, voices like warm caramel. Very strange stuff for these parts, but very obvious: That’s vampires. But we figured out vampires loved contracts almost right after that. Erik Donahue down the street had the bright idea to finally say “let’s make a deal” to the ghastly specter of death hanging around his porch, pleading to be let inside. The specter of death very quickly produced parchment and pen from under its flowing black cloak, and said in a heavy European accent, “I am ready to record the terms of our agreement.” That first agreement was basically, “if I let you in, you can’t eat me and you have to shut up so I can get some sleep.” It ended with a house cat being eaten, and the cheeky devil gleefully pointing out that no terms had been broken. Still, it gave us two huge insights. Vampires like contracts. Vampires didn’t break contracts.It was only a day or two after that we had a mandatory HOA meeting to discuss our next steps. We couldn’t fight vampires outright: They were ancient beings of unspeakable evil and hunger, and we were a collection of working professionals and stay-at-home parents, barely equipped for a holy war beyond the odd hand gun. Calling the police or the military was also out of the question — we had property values to consider.I’ll be the first to tell you that the meeting almost wasn’t productive. The scars of past grievances and petty squabbles were just too fresh. Mr. Morton’s azaleas trashed by some kids’ hide-and-seek contest that spilled over into his territory. Debra Vorhees canceling book club at the last minute three times when it was her turn to host. Little Jimmy Merkins and his motley gang of ding-dong ditchers. Too many people seemed keen to enact some sort of lottery system; where the shortest straw or the lowest number or the painted pebble was simply sacrificed to the vampires every week/other week/month. Where every rules violation — be it a garbage can left on the street after pick-up, a hedge that wasn’t trimmed, a due that wasn’t paid, or a lawn that hadn’t been adequately cut and weeded — was simply punishable by death by vampire. Where we’d all just collectively feed a neighbor to these gaunt bloodthirsty shadows and make a big show of brushing sweat off our brow and going “phew!” like some sort of cartoon, because it hadn’t been us. Because we had been lucky.The sentiment that ultimately won out was: This is America, dammit. The land of freedom and bootstraps, elbow grease and jackpots. We all deserved to have a fighting chance, not just a random chance. If these monsters were going to be in our neighborhood, insisting they ate us, we deserved some sort of trial by figurative combat. To die with our boots on, standing up. The question then became: What should the combat be? What was a thing we all had a shot at?It was ultimately me that pointed out that we all bowl, but someone else was bound to get there eventually. Thanks to the neighborhood bowling league, our whole little subdivision did bowl — just about every Friday night. It was probably the one thing we had in common besides proximity and gossip and floor plans. Fostering and running this league had been my way of contributing to the community since I had moved in. The fact that I am the proprietor of Bowl-O-Rama is frankly just coincidence. I’ve always loved bowling; I’d organize a league even if I didn’t own a bowling alley. We had Jerry Vorhees, an attorney who lived two streets over, draw up a contract. We all signed, and that evening Jerry handed it off (through his living room window) to a vampire to have all them review it and sign if they approved. They returned it that same evening, no amendments or changes. Cocky bastards.That first Friday after was the inaugural bowling competition. Mrs. O’Hara, a grandmother at the end of the cul-de-sac, had hand-painted “Bowling with Dracula” on a cloth banner and hung it over Bowl-O-Rama’s entrance. The vampires grumbled at this; I guess Dracula was a sore spot for them. It was for that reason I’ve made sure to hang it every single week since. Despite that first time being almost business as usual for our group, there was a nervous undercurrent in the air. Like there was one sentence on everyone’s tongues that wasn’t being said. It was being spelled out, morse-code style, in the flitting glances we all traded each other. People shifted on their feet, weighing how heavy the air was — and if it might slow them down if they had to make a break for it. It was pretty easy to edit the existing bracket to now include the vampires. Now, instead of advancing further in a tournament, we were just all paired off with a bloodsucker. Everyone had one match to come out on top. Winners won the right to live another week, unbothered by the vampire’s nighttime solicitations. Losers were be drained outside in the back alley by the dumpsters, to avoid making a mess. The third thing we discovered was vampires are absolute dogshit at bowling. Maybe it was their wraith-like fingers that made it impossible to properly grip the bowling ball. Maybe it was their night vision that made it tough for them to see the oil patterns on the smooth wood. Maybe it was their flowing capes and cloaks that would set off the sensor at the front of the lane. Really though, I think it just came down to them being totally green behind the ears. Zero concept of what bowling was about. You’d think for being immortal beings, they would’ve lived a little. Branched out beyond stalking prey and writing contracts at some point. No joke, they were only getting one to four pins a game. Everything else was a gutter ball. Frankly, it was impossible for us to not trash talk this performance. “Ay, Count Sucks-Ass-ula, try hitting the pins next time.” “Have you guys always lived in gutters like this? I guess it must be cozier than a big castle.” “No sorry, bumpers are only for those under 300 years old. You’re a big boy, go ahead and throw it.” “If it helps, we’ll all pray for you to get a pin this time? Oh! Right, sorry, damnation. Forgot.”“I heard werewolves were great at bowling. Really makes you think, huh?”It got to the point that the cheers and whoops and jeers that would erupt at their garbage scores would shake the walls; we started toning it down only when someone worried that we might knock more of their pins down with our noise. The vampires left the Bowl-O-Rama defeated, dejected, and, we assume, on the hunt for some rats or squirrels to suck down since our pets were also now covered by the contract.That’s been life here ever since: Every Friday, we all get together and beat the bejesus out of a bunch of pasty Nosferatu dweebs to win another week of living. Bowling is typically a pretty social game, but besides the occasional trash talk, we hardly acknowledge them. I couldn’t tell you what any of their names were, or where their homelands were, or what it’s like being undead. Just knowing that they want to drain me is all I need to know. The most talking they might do on their end is a grumble that they’d like to revisit the terms of the contract. At this, we’d give them the bird and tell them to go suck a rat. I want to take a second to say — we’re just regular people, not dumb. We recognize these are immortal beings of endless appetite. Unholy things shaped and forged to utmost evil over the course of centuries. They’ve seen empires come and go. We can see that their scores continue to improve by a pin or two every couple of months. We know time is on their side; they will eventually, with enough practice, figure this out. That unspoken sentence is still at the tip of all our tongues. Someday, one of us will probably, finally, say it out loud. But that is a problem for future us, perhaps maybe even our children, or their children. For now, we’re together and we’re alive. Every Friday night at the Bowl-O-Rama, the beer is cold, the chicken wings are saucy and you simply cannot not bob your head and tap your foot to the music coming from the jukebox. Every strike we throw sounds like a thunderstorm, or a car crash, or the hands of God applauding us for how we’ve gotten on so far. Tonight, as it has been every night, life is good, even with all things considered and present company accounted for.
April 28, 2025
Fiction
APPROPRIATE by Andrew P. Heath
She said something vague to me. I said something appropriate. She said, What? I said something appropriate. Looking at her. Her collarbone. She said something sarcastic. I said something appropriate. I looked at her collarbone, then slowly looked up at her face. She looked like a cocker spaniel (I did not say that). I had once been very attracted to her. When she would take a shower, I could hear the water running, and I imagined her in there, elegant, graceful, small, her long black hair slicked across her white body. The image was potent and intoxicating, I was drunk in my bed. When she left the bathroom, I would go in and there would be steam and a musky herbal scent. She was speaking, nervously, it seemed. When I don’t say anything, she tends to go on, I thought. I said something appropriate. Our eyes met for exactly one second. She was once very attractive, but now she looked like a cocker spaniel. She has not changed, I thought, I have changed, our relationship has changed. I have not changed. Have I not changed? I became aware that the conversation was strained, uncomfortable. I smiled. I nodded. I said something appropriate. Once, in the middle of the night I poured myself a glass of water and she appeared behind me in ball gown. She said something to me, then. I don’t remember if I said anything back, but if I did, I’m certain it was appropriate. She said, well, goodnight, and left the apartment. On a different night she was in the bathroom. The door was ajar. I could see through the crack of the door the shower rod was pulled down into the tub. I tapped on the door three times with the fingernail of my right index finger. She said, I’m sorry. I didn’t say anything. I went back to bed. I pissed out of my window.
April 25, 2025
Creative Nonfiction
THE COMPULSIVE ON MOTHER EATING by Chel Campbell
I have hurt my child by accident, banging his fine-haired head on open car doors or slipping down the stairs, purpling my spent body to shield his from impact. I used to be able to nurse the hurt away, both of us grateful for the easy relief. My inner voice says I am never glad when an accident happens. Another voice says I want to hurt my child on purpose. Those are the days when I am afraid to love my child, as if my love could eat him. My therapist says the past-abused often feel terrified that they or someone they love will hurt their children. I think of stressed mother rabbits that consume their young in disgraced conditions. How easily a creature breaks from her nature if the nest is sullied. I do not ask about the days I fear I do not love him enough, as if his love could eat me. In a mother velvet spider’s ideal scenario, her spiderlings consume her flesh after birth. Their womb-killing doesn’t prove her love or lack thereof. There is only the flesh of her flesh devouring her. Nature, too, is breakage. Thin white lines connect the nature of love and survival until the deep hunger passes. I let my milk dry. My son, walking and weaned, trips during our game of chase, teeth cutting lip. I kneel to mother his tear-streaked face blooming blood, steady for his burying into my chest. His fingers tug the neckline of my shirt for an opening. One of my hands stops his instinctual search while the other smears his blood on the wall. There, in that stain of flesh that belongs to neither of us, hides a love both familiar and new.“Let’s eat breakfast,” I say when the crying ends, leading him to the kitchen. He watches me with questioning eyes as I crack two eggs into the bowl and hand him a whisk. Together, we begin to beat.
April 23, 2025
Micros
ALL THE NAMES WE HAVE TO HAVE FOR LOVE by Lei Wang
Someone saw some cloudsonce upon a time. So what?I can see them, too —a haiku But better to have seen them a thousand years ago. I am not being sentimental. I like plumbing as much as anyone, and I know the more pollution, the more brilliant sunsets. But the first poems, you could write about anything. Day turning into night a real phenomenon, a mouth and another mouth. The first poems had no metaphors because nothing was like anything else yet.The kiss was a courting ritual involving, what else, food. A capybara feeding a berry to another capybara, baby birds, wolves translating deer. The first kisses were a promise of future fish, future strawberries: they were symbols, poems. What we want are practical morsels. Let’s nourish the fuck out of each other, a lover says. Hungry, we say, for anything we desire.The first poems were reports. The world was new and you only wanted to factcheck what you saw: are clouds white to you? White as pillowcases? White as teeth? Does billow mean the same to you as to me? How does a frog go? Is the sea far away or no distance at all? Does the moon look sad to you tonight as well? And every night?Why are there so many nature poems? I asked an English professor once. Well, there are just as many city poems, she said. She meant: you see what you want to see.The painters in the caves at Lascaux were saying, bison exist bison exist. Not nostalgizing or vision boarding: just stating the facts. Once upon a time, the facts were enough.
April 22, 2025
Fiction
PARENTHETICAL by J. A Gullickson
The floor-to-ceiling windows let in so much light that the office is sweltering. Before the sun emerges from behind the tree line, the HVAC system will turn on. These brisk breaths signal the start of a new day for the company. Graham cycles through the presentation again, sinking deeper into his chair. Each slide features a corporate incantation coldly justifying decisions few care for. Key stakeholders have already made up their minds. This is only a formality.In the center of the cube farm lives Hannah. She stares blankly at the two screens in front of her, cursor gliding back and forth between them. The monitors exist separately, but within the technological sinew is a bridge which allows digital matter to travel between them.Here is Peter, some steps away, behind a closed door. Its frosted glass turns men into shapes from another place. He paces back and forth, waiting for the call. This urgency keeps the machine going.In seven years’ time, Graham will run Creative Services. Nine years from now, in Q2, Hannah will be promoted to SVP of Strategy. Peter will give the company over two decades of his life, eventually becoming Chief Technological Officer, before having an aneurysm at his desk late one Friday evening. He won’t be found until the following Monday morning.They will spend more of their lifetime with the company than their own families. That is to be expected. They owe it to the company who grants them paid time off, who provides them the means to pay for medicine, who needs the drones to exist. Graham and Hannah and Peter are just some of the thousands of employees who put in over 40 hours a week for the good of the company. Their roles are utterly meaningless. They’re all in this together. They’re like a family, after all.The drones don’t know the disease festering within. It started ten weeks ago. A group of kings in department store suits, who are seldom seen by their subjects, committed the unthinkable. At their roundtable, tucked away in the cavernous complex of the company, a meeting was held announcing the purported invasion and takeover of their rival Grant Holdings’ shining star: Parenthetical. The lifeblood of the portfolio, Parenthetical is a SaaS titan with a staggering 73% market share in the programmatic space. AdAge calls it “the last omnichannel platform the industry will ever need”.In Q4, a press release announcing the future of Parenthetical will be blasted out to relevant media outlets. The process begins here. The press release will be written by copywriter Felicia K. and will then be delivered to her creative manager, then submitted to the proofreading vendor, then returned to her creative manager, then reassigned to Felicia K. for edits, then delivered to her creative manager, then resubmitted to the proofreading vendor, then returned to her creative manager, then reviewed by her creative manager, then delivered to the creative director, then approved by the creative director, then submitted to the Chief Creative Officer, then returned to the creative director with massive edits, then rewritten by the creative director, then submitted to the Chief Creative Officer, then approved by the Chief Creative Officer, then submitted to Compliance for approval, then returned to the Chief Creative Officer with some light edits, then reassigned to the creative director with light edits, then submitted to the Chief Creative Officer with revisions, then approved by the Chief Creative Officer, then approved by Compliance, and then submitted to the Board, then it is approved, then it is sent to the public relations agency Stealth in Chicago to be released on Tuesday at 10AM Eastern Standard Time. This is the process. It does not forgive. Felicia K. will not recognize her work when she sees the news on CNN’s homepage. She’ll send a link of the article to Hannah on Microsoft Teams. She’ll tell Hannah she thought she wrote something else entirely. The process always transforms what it receives. At the time of its acquisition, Parenthetical employed close to 800 employees across the country with off-shore teams in the Philippines and India. This does not account for the unknown number of contractors currently working for Parenthetical, whose engagements span from a number of months to several years. The loaded gun Felicia K. thought she wrote would be the start of the swift and merciless gutting. The calendar invite is a death sentence. The words “All Hands Meeting” careens into inboxes companywide. A hushed chorus of uncertainty begins to throb.The impending restructuring awakes something. From the darkest depths of legal teams, parent companies, and non-disclosure agreements, a cruelty is set into motion. It will infect the workforce that once drove Parenthetical. Operations will reorganize. Departments will realign. Generations will cease. Bloodlines will end.The Parenthetical US IT team will unfortunately not be part of the migration. Once the merger is complete, they will be let go with a respectable (four-weeks’ pay) severance package. Two months following the announcement, former Parenthetical Network Architect Reggie C. will get a flat tire while driving to the second round of a job interview, then get hit by a car, then be paralyzed from the neck down for the next 19 years, then, at 58, he will purposefully drive his motorized wheelchair hard enough into the corner of the kitchen counter to split his forehead open. He does this while his wife, Terri, is getting groceries two miles away. He will continue to drive his head into the corner of the kitchen counter until he loses consciousness, then bleed out before Terri returns home. A year and a half after being laid off, former Parenthetical Senior Systems Analyst Erin M. will wrap her minivan around a mighty sycamore .6 miles from her home, then the impact of the collision will cause her daughter’s car seat to fail, then, as Erin slips into a warm endless sleep, she will try to take the glass out of her motionless daughter’s hair.Parenthetical grants its clients access to premium advertising channels, leveraging their catalog of quality inventory from over 170 supply partners to achieve campaign objectives effectively. Clients can harness the transformative power of Parenthetical’s in-platform AI optimization for their ad groups. Users can boost CPMs on top-performing inventory, trim underperforming inventory, and strategically direct spend in real time to their chosen KPIs. Enabled across ten dimensions, Parenthetical’s AI optimization, known as Parrot, revolutionizes efficiency across channels and audiences and unleashes the potential of Parenthetical’s optimization engine for a revamped advertising strategy.The Parenthetical marketing team is let go immediately. They receive a respectable (four-weeks’ pay) severance package. Two years after being laid off, former Parenthetical Marketing Manager Braam C. will become a family annihilator, then extended family members will be on the local news talking about how “there were signs” and how “we should’ve listened.” Six years after this, his life and crimes become the fodder of a bonus episode of a murder podcast for subscribers who pay $5 a month. Former Parenthetical Paid Media Analyst Keiko W. is approached by a headhunter on behalf of Henkel North American Consumer Goods, then is hired to work on the Persil laundry detergent marketing team, then Keiko W. develops acuphagia, a form of pica, then she chokes on a clear thumbtack in her car in the office parking lot. Former Parenthetical Social Media Manager Kevin A. marries his fiancé, Liam, two weeks after being laid off, then the newlyweds take advantage of Kevin A.’s newfound freedom from the workforce and plan a last-minute trip to South Africa as an impromptu honeymoon, then Kevin A. is mauled to death by a Boerboel in an alley while waiting for Liam to finish purchasing fruit from a vendor. Parenthetical bridges the gap between modern marketers and the advanced advertising tech required in today’s dynamic media landscape. It is a proverbial gateway to advertising across top DSP platforms like The Trade Desk, Amazon, and more. Clients can manage campaigns across various channels and devices easily and at their convenience. Clients can elevate their marketing strategies with Parenthetical’s suite of audience-targeting solutions. Digital marketers can benefit from first-party data onboarding, tap into cutting-edge third-party targeting tools, implement precision ABM targeting, and explore a wide array of tailored options. Parenthetical’s award-winning customer service teams playfully boast they are available twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week.The Parenthetical accounts team never stand a chance. They do, however, receive a very respectable (four-weeks’ pay) severance package. In the weeks following her termination, Former Parenthetical Client Success Manager Aubrey E. hires Ji Hwang on Fiverr to perform a resume audit and will quickly discover many of her skills are non-transferable. She still doesn’t have a job 18 months later. She will write one final note that will be added to her connection request on LinkedIn to Senior Recruiter Craig Motton at King Global Staffing Solutions which will read I think I’m done trying now. Cheers! Officer Wilmer Brusch will find her in her apartment bathtub four days later after a wellness check is called in, and Officer Brusch will find she sliced into the interior of her left forearm so deep the knife was stuck in her radius.Parker, Thomas & Associates has an ambitious goal for their client, Therapan: increase online sales by a minimum of 50% within two years. To achieve this, the focus must extend beyond mere visibility to a comprehensive strategy encompassing a broad range of online tactics. Target audiences were meticulously identified based on product categories. This involved a strategic blend of first-party and third-party data to formulate effective targeting strategies. A multifaceted targeting strategy unfolded, incorporating behavioral, retargeting, and contextual targeting. Specific campaigns and creatives were tailored to diverse promotions, strategically boosting sales across different product categories. Despite constituting only 3-5% of the monthly visitor traffic, the traffic driven to the site through the campaign substantially impacted 25-50% of online sales. The Return on Advertising Spend, or ROA for the uninitiated, ranged from 5x to 20x– a testament to the efficiency of the strategy. This outcome was attributed to collecting user data via the Parenthetical Smart Container Tag, consolidating insights from all website visitors driven by various media sources. The online revenue saw a 65% increase over the two-year advertising period, surpassing the initial goal of a 50% boost. This success has paved the way for future expansions, with plans to set even more ambitious goals in the upcoming years. The surge in demand prompted the expansion of the factory’s production to three shifts, underscoring the tangible impact of the advertising efforts on Therapan’s overall business operations.In 1999, Fred Gunnar was a Senior Account Representative at Jones Intercable, based in Georgetown, Colorado. During his 12 years with the company, Fred Gunnar accrued several thousand shares of company stock as part of his elected compensation package. The Comcast Corporation acquired Jones Intercable in 1999. Fred Gunnar received a large lump sum for his shares on top of a respectable (16-weeks’ pay) severance package. Fred Gunnar left Colorado shortly after Jones Intercable was acquired by The Comcast Corporation. Fred Gunnar has not worked in over 25 years. Fred Gunnar is a proud grandfather.The most disturbing aspect of this plague is how indiscriminately it kills. Parenthetical employees believed in their work. They reveled in the chance to become storied titans in the industry. With one indifferent sigh and slash of a pen, everything becomes small. So many creative sprints, workshops, one on ones—insignificant. So goes the acquisition ritual which pumps red through the beating heart of America.It takes 17 weeks for Parenthetical to be completely absorbed. Upon acquisition, Former Chief Executive Officer Martin P. receives a respectable (104-weeks’ pay) contract payout package and then Gold Private Equity offers Martin P. a fractional Chief Marketing Officer role at HanWool Corporation’s English speaking satellite office in Berlin. Former Chief Operating Officer Michael L. receives a respectable (208-weeks’ pay) payout and then retires. He is currently exploring the pharmaceutical industry after gaining interest in the Actiq Lollipop, a delivery device for fentanyl which combines the pain reliever with fillers and sweeteners. After developing diabetes in his mid-forties, Michael L. is interested in developing a sugar-free version. Former Chief Marketing Officer Elias N. receives a respectable (104-weeks’ pay) payout, takes a contract Chief Marketing Officer role with MullenLowe Group and advises the leadership team of both MediaHub and MullenLowe Profero.Graham, Hannah, and Peter don’t have much to say about Parenthetical. Graham is swamped this week. The brainstorming meeting for a holiday campaign was less than fruitful and really set him behind. Hannah needs to finish that deck about last month’s paid digital campaigns. The A/B testing yielded some rather interesting results that the strategy team should see sooner rather than later. Peter has a wedding he’s going to this weekend. He has a blinding headache right now, though. The floor-to-ceiling windows stand like monoliths after sunset. The HVAC system breathes its last breath at 7PM. The air in the office will slowly become stale and acrid over the next two days. On Monday, someone will cry in the handicap bathroom stall and everyone will pretend they don’t hear anything. Maybe a glass of water will help.
April 21, 2025
Interviews & Reviews
DO THESE BOOKS MAKE ME LOOK WEIRD?: JACK SKELLEY RECOMMENDS
Madison Murray, My Gaping Masshole (Self-published, 2025)A tart is born: Announcing Madison Murray’s fiction, poems, collages. The collection is replete with references to Boston (especially North Shore, Massachusetts). You know, Dunkin Donuts, clam chowdah, the Red Sox Big Green Monstah, Paul Revere, etc. My Gaping Masshole is one unholy, whole, big-ass jam on the concept. Murray’s lewd charm stains every page. My fave parts are Murray’s stories, with real laff-per-paragraph settings, characters, dialog. Of today’s several new writers who are also sex workers (or sex worker-adjacent), Murray is the raunchiest… and funniest.The geo-specificity reminds me of this essential William Blake riff from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity.” (Italics mine.) Not “genius” in the sense of Einstein (although that fits). But in the sense of the human imagination embodied in every locale. Every writer does this to a degree. I know I never cease the love-hate relationship with the Los Angeles of my mind. Of course, in 2025 we’re deep in tawdry, post-post-post irony mode, so Murray mocks and embodies a debased “mental deity” of Massachusetts with the obsessive affection of a dirty completist. Book vloggersThere’s a world of yackers on YouTube. Most stick to reviewing large-press fiction. But keener vloggers venture into independent presses and niche genres. Here are some trends. Best vloggers: Chanel Chapters (pictured) reviews from Melbourne with access to at least two excellent indie stores (Metropolis Bookshop and World Food Books) and local libraries. Chapters’ open mind, plunging cleavage, and sometimes potty mouth recently incited threats by YouTube to demonetize her! (All part of the global megamedia crackdown, folks.) But this reviewer continues to rock with wit, humor, urban tours and delicious fits. YouTube has not exactified what rules were broken, so WTF else is she supposed to do? Go, Chanel!Ana Wallace Johnson has accrued 68K subscribers not only for reviews (personal takes but I haven’t disagreed yet), but also for travel vids and glimpses of her low-budget/highbrow NYC lifestyle and tastes. What sets Wallace apart is a droll demeanor. Come for the laffs, stay for the books: Wallace’s taste ventures past mass-market narrative toward non-fiction, drama, used bookstores, and forays into independent presses. The Wallace wit includes impromptu raps where she observes her word-choices in the act—self-mocking/self-correcting. Her Sally Rooney review had me howling. Honorable mention: Chris Via on Leaf by Leaf has total cred and writes legit lit crit. Trend Watch: “Weird lit” is a big vlogger term, but notice how often it is equated with horror, a mega genre that occasionally edges into artful lit-fic via voices such as Elle Nash and Charlene Elsby. Also, is Shirley Jackson really “horror”? Vloggers sometimes confuse “weird women lit” with the “sad-girl novel” and straight-up narrative. Like, are Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney actually “weird”? This adjective is abused! Editor’s advice: Avoid non-descript, general terms: thing, stuff, good, bad, really, something and, yes, weird… unless that is indeed the best word. Emmalea Russo, Vivienne (Skyhorse, 2024) Resonant novel fashions a (fictional) update of (actual) deceased artist Hans Belmer’s long-surviving (fictional) lover Vivienne Volker. Vivienne may or may not have been involved in the long-ago suicide of Belmer’s other (fictional) lover Wilma Lang, who may or may not suggest (actual) writer and artist Unica Zürn. But never mind all that. It’s just intrigue to power the contemporary plot and stylistic gymnastics. These feats include revolving POVs and entire chapters rendered in YouTube comments. Themes include shady shenanigans of the art-world “industry”; the hypocrisies of cancel culture (the author was a prey of same); and cross-generational sex/romance offered nonchalantly. The book may haunt you months after reading if you encounter Belmer and Zürn. Jessamyn Violet, Venice Peach (Maudlin House, 2025)Uh-oh! A TikTok time bomb has burst the Superdoom Portal. A vengeful AI president punishes all citizens, sex bots and media stars. Nothing, it seems, can stop the haywire L.A Hellscape seen by twisted visionary Jessamyn Violet. Inside dope: The author wrote this dystopian funhouse during the first Trump preziduncy. She learned Maudlin House would publish it just as Trump was re-elected last year. This gives the story’s vindictive President TBD 3000 – and all its characters and scenes – the quality of a Cassandra curse. Except that it’s farcically funny. David Trinidad, Hollywood Cemetery (Green Linden, 2025)Heaven’s stars are quasi-immortal, while Hollywood’s are fated to fade. Graciously, Trinidad’s page-sized eulogies grant a couple dozen bit players one last flash-in-the-pan. The actors tell their own stories, but Trinidad’s voice floats above them, an angel wearing shades, bestowing epitaphs, footnotes and the harsh irony of glimmer and glamour doomed in a company town. (Capitalism, like time, is cruel.) The lives of these players (including one dog, Toto) end prosaically. Still, they emit elegantly tangy poetry, as does this book. Elaine Equi and Jerome Sala, Double Feature (Insurance Editions, 2024). Elaine Equi and Jerome Sala are poetry’s power couple. For decades they have lived, loved, performed and blown minds together. Equi with amusement, bemusement and rough-to-smooth edges that engage the senses, then the mind. Sala with knee-slap spit-takes on commodity culture borne from a career in advertising. Both are premiere pop poets, descending from the New York School of tender accessibility. Despite their years together, this is, to my knowledge, their first collaborative book. It’s two chapbooks in one… a bargain! Diva Corp USA, volume 2, zineI do not understand the art industry, especially how its monetary mechanics so unsustainably skew to collectors and a handful of “art stars.” This tracks roughly with music and publishing. But the art world erects a pantheon of demi-gods in acropolis museums: The new Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a $ billion palace of excess by “starchitect” Peter Zumthor. Hilde Lynn Helphenstein’s Diva Corp essay “Stop Crying Over Spilled Inauthenticity” says this “increasingly byzantine” world strains connections between genuine artists/art lovers and its buyers/institutions. And, as if embarrassed by fancy servicing of the 1%, it bathes in identity politics. Is this what makes it prone to serial cancelling even while its elites roam free, hypocritically? Other Diva Corp contributions include stories, poems and reproductions…all on newsprint. It performs its public service in mock mystery. I attended the launch event. The editors/publishers were MIA. They are anonymous. Issues were placed by the restroom toilets. I couldn’t find one. But they did print my theoretical manifesto “Das NeuroKapital.” Dunce Codex, anthologyPubbed by editor Roo, this is two collections: prose and poetry. Impressive design and voices. Gobs of lit-besties young and not so young: Benjamin Weissman, Dennis Cooper, Frank Demma, Gabby Sones, Lily Lady, Erin Satterthwaite, Riley Mac, Meat Stevens, Derek Fisher, Manuel Chavarria, Sophie Appel, Selva Imran, Priscilla Jasmine, Brittany Menjivar, Clarke e. Andros, Pedro Minet, Alistair McCartney, Thomas Moore, Eileen Myles, Jacqui Alpine, Charalampos Tzanakis, Amy Gerstler, Jimmy Vega. Plus many worthy peeps new to me. Freakishly, my name pops up in two unrelated pieces and in Roo’s intro! Order from duncecodex@protonmail.com. Car Crash Collective, anthologyLike Dunce Codex above, this robust volume is proof of scene solidity. It evolved from the same-named reading series by lit Angelenas Erin Satterthwaite and Brittany Menjivar. (Events in L.A., New York, Berlin and…) There’s no index, so rather than skip to a name, you open and read. Rewarding prose results include Zoey Greenwald, Kate Durbin, Chris Molnar, Taylor Lewandowski, Alec Niedenthal, Sarah Velk and Belinda Cai. Beau Geste, 2nd Issue, zineHere’s a multi-media mind fuck: A magazine that is also an oversized artwork is also documentation of a recent Los Angeles performance. Curated by Jordan Rountree, the texts/images reflect that event’s perpetration of a high-level goof: Ostensibly it celebrated playwright Bertold Brecht receiving a long-overdue star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Except there is no such star for Germany’s socialist inventor of confrontational theater. (He deserves one: As a Nazi-fleeing expat in L.A., Brecht co-wrote the screenplay for the Fritz Lang-directed Hangmen Also Die!) Work is by Rountree plus Hannah Bhuiya, Brittany Menjivar, Joseph Mosconi, Zara Schuster, Ian F. Svenonius, Dakota Blue, Jean Marco Torres. Silicone God, Victoria Brooks (U.S.: House of Vlad, 2025, England: Moist, 2024)Here is part of my Introduction to the U.S. edition of this freak-ass novel: The characters and narrator(s) of Silicone God reference by inference what elsewhere has been termed The Singularity—the point where all technology hyper-evolves to one mass/individual consciousness. This is not a future historical period: It is a forever present. In Silicone God, that point is called Time. It manifests in the characters of future Silicone/human/god hybrids (their bodies composed of The New Flesh), while the Now is “our” limited experience as fleshly humans, also known as The Rotten. The author’s stand-in, Shae, envisions the Singularity of Time in passages that mix the cosmic with the tartly comic… and just plain bizarre… sometimes echoing (to me) the deranged geography of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations:“When I first saw the Sea of Time, I thought it looked like heaven. It was a heaving mirror, the same colour as the violet sunset and the silica under my feet. Massive cock-shaped mushrooms poked up among the dunes.” This partly explains Silicone God’s portal shifts of temporal teases. With tentacle-tongue in cheek, Brooks’ book’s dramatis personae embody a menu of preposterous and sublimely amusing monstrosity. Personal apocalypse is a hot and horny bitch mistress from a “future” (teasingly aggregated into the figure of Evaline), ever out-of-reach from a yearning ego-desire (loosely reduced to a self-conscious, auto-fictionesque narrator Shae). This scrambles “character” and “narrative.” Not to mention “gender.” And even “species.” Interrupting and disputing Shae’s chronology (directly on the page!) is Nez, a divine transexual character (created by mushroom gods 3,000 years in the future). Among these figures, a form of gender politics is at play. Males are backgrounded or subsumed into sometimes-competitive female psyches. And the carnally charged friction between these characters pistons plot conflict, intermingling their voices… suggesting that in Time, they are components of one God—or Goddess—psyche. Networking such concepts is a web of purposefully messy evolution imagery. This includes mushrooms, plus cephalopods and their anime tentacle-porn appendages. If mushroom gods usher in the Silicone Becoming of Time, does their form signify the phallus? As with the living, twitching dildoes in multiple sex-scenes, the answer is yes. Except, like everything in Silicone God, the phallus mutates, often mid-coitus, to female organs, and mixtures betwixt:“My little suckers cupped her skin – the slimy hot and cold sensations sending her wild. I put one on her clit, and carefully engorged it with blood so much that it became a mini cock. She begged me to kiss it till she came.”The Hamletesque, self-doubting narration of Shae jolts these freak shows with the frisson of lived experience. This is Silicone God’s twist on the (by-now) depleted or (always) ill-defined genre of auto-fiction. Did these scenes “really” happen? I don’t mean, did Shae’s legs really engorge into semi-autonomous octopus limbs, the better to pleasure her lover? But did the narrator want you to wonder if the author “really” was/is a multi-lover mistress gunning for full-on lesbo relations in a world of earthquaking gender norms? Or, is the shifting of skin and sexes a metaphor for lovers deceiving their intendeds and themselves? For seduction?Brooks cagily demurs. In a 2024 XRAY chat, she posited her theories of plastic narrative to me thusly: “My book gives dramatic colour to thinking around the mistress archetype, and I have been a mistress many times. So, some of the tougher scenes (and some of the hot ones!) are direct from experience. I've paired the very real, with the outright unreal.”
April 15, 2025
by Mike Topp
$25 | Perfect bound | 72 pages
Paperback | Die-cut matte cover | 7×7″
Mike Topp’s poems defy categorization. That’s why they are beloved by seamstresses, pathologists, blackmailers and art collectors.
–Sparrow
