Archives | X-R-A-Y

CARS THAT TREATED ME POORLY by Jennifer Greidus

May 2, 2018

These aren’t pictures of my cars. In fact, they may not even be pictures of the years of my cars. They are the color of my cars, the model, the make. The years, however, are a blur of heartbreak, manslaughter, and ice storms. Volvo 66: My mother conceived her second child in this car. (Remember, not this car but a car such as this car.) There was a big scene and a miscarriage, which led to a complicated D&C, and then we had to have a memorial for the fetus. I am an only child. Honda Accord: I drove this

INTERVIEW WITH SAM PINK by Benjamin Scott

May 1, 2018

Sam Pink is the author of a dozen books, including Person, The No Hellos Diet, Hurt Others, and Witch Piss. I interviewed him about his latest book The Garbage Times/White Ibis, his paintings, and his time living in Florida. BS: You lived in Chicago for a while but several years ago you moved to Florida. What sparked the move and why have you moved back to Chicago? SP: I moved to Florida for the person I was dating. I moved back when we broke up. BS: Sorry to hear about that. Does Chicago seem different? Where is the best place to

X-R-A-Y ISSUE #3

May 1, 2018

DOWNLOAD ISSUE #3 MAY 2018 marisha gene hicks // lanny durbin // juliet escoria // scott mcclanahan // derick dupre // kelby losack // ted prokash // nathaniel duggan // sam pink // benjamin scott // claire hopple // jennifer greidus // chris dankland

LILLY AND THE NINE-TOED WOMAN by Toom Bucksaw

April 27, 2018

Lilly brushed her teeth and saw another woman’s face in the mirror. She stared into her eyes and wished she could ask that woman where the fourth toe of her left foot had gone. Why hadn’t she taken better care of herself? Didn’t she know Lilly would need her toes someday? Lilly pulled her socks on and tried to forgive her. In the big room Ellis was still sleeping on the floor with his head on the couch. The mechanical blinds on the window were creakily opening and shafts of sunlight were pooling on his face. Lilly didn’t let him

HONOR SYSTEM by Daniel Handelman

April 26, 2018

“Maybe some people have both,” she said. She was rolling up a joint. It had too much weed in it. The edges didn’t connect. “The way she writes the male,” she said. “She knows the male. But does the male know the female?” She leaned back into the couch. They’d gone to a motel. There was no Americana, no plastic flamingoes. It was a motel with none of that. It wasn’t what she pictured. “There must be a male who knows the female,” he said. “Out of seven billion people, it is possible there is a male who knows the

LUCK OF THE PLUG by Gregg Williard

April 25, 2018

The power strip could take nine plugs. Only four were being used. The floor lamp, table lamp, TV/DVD player and CD player were all off. She pressed the off switch on the strip. The little light went out. She pulled out the plugs. She went to the kitchen and got a roll of tinfoil. She tore off small pieces and tucked them into the outlets, deep enough to be hidden. She wiggled the plugs back into the outlets. She used a butter knife to wedge tinfoil behind the power switch. Maybe when he turned the strip back on it would

BABY WITH A FLAMETHROWER, CHEWING GUM ON A MOUNTAIN by Rebecca Gransden

April 24, 2018

Stay back! I will melt your mugs with fire if you move an inch, you police cordon shitmorons. Your pink stinks. Especially you. Stares at squat policewoman centre left I’ve filed my baby teeth into pointy baby fangs, and I will bite with my baby jaw if you try to stop me. The pitball in the alley showed me how to do it. I watched its eyes too, you know. Baby arcs flamethrower flame overhead making an infernal rainbow against a starry ink sky My burping today is toxic gas, regurgitated from last night, from the barrels of radioactive waste

“LIVEBLOG” EXCERPT by Megan Boyle

April 23, 2018

MARCH 27, 2013 1:20AM: going to change up the game. really. um. this is really going to happen. so, in grad school, my dad and his friend motivated themselves to finish their dissertations by agreeing to mail one $100 check to the nixon administration for every day late. so. here is what i must do by tomorrow 12AM, this is my ‘dissertation:’ -return attorney’s phone call about accident settlement i’m receiving -write and print cover letter at library -mail apartment application binder -mail book packages -call dad about getting keys to storage unit thursday -refill birth control -pack one box

WHERE WE LEFT IXIAN COUNTY by Tobias Carroll

April 22, 2018

The suburbs of tiny Ixian County were unmade in the torrents and floods of 2003. After the waters had abated they left behind a highway exit, a handful of roads, and little else. Four towns’ worth of ruins and a farm, abandoned to bankruptcy years before, that had gone largely untouched. That was it. The ruined barn and the decomposing silos, now home to hundreds of bats that dined on the county’s grotesque moth population, mocked us all. The mudslides, swore the relevant parties, were finished; the mudslides would never come again. Infrastructure was being built, they promised, at this

A FEMININE DARKNESS REBORN: REVIEW OF MOTHER! by Christina Antonovskaya

April 21, 2018

(Warning: spoilers) We were looking for the room at Champagne Centre for the appointment, and I found a pin on the ground that has “I feel it all” written on it and an image of a woman smoking printed on it. I took it and put it in the left pocket of my pea coat and will probably keep it there. This quote resonates with me and also with the themes of the script and film. Impurity, more exact, the myth of pureness is depicted through Mother’s character with physiology, vicarious causation of surroundings, and the creator of Mother himself,