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TRYING TO FIND SOMETHING BETTER: An Interview with Steve Gergley

June 11, 2024

Since 2022’s A Quick Primer on Wallowing in Despair: Stories (LEFTOVER Books) Steve Gergley has been steadily and consistently adding to an impressive body of work. The Great Atlantic Highway & Other Stories (Malarkey, 2024) is a showcase for Gergley’s specialties, and reflects the ache at the center of modern existence. Contemporary fables grounded in grit follow tales of high weirdness, and the mundane frequently threatens to be undone. A fuzz pedal is just as likely to be encountered as a strange angel. I spoke to Steve about the collection. Rebecca Gransden: Like it always felt like

WORK FROM HOME by Jenn Salcido

June 10, 2024

It’s not looking good for us, Jeremy thinks, as he opens the fridge and peers inside. A small, desiccated head of broccoli, provenance unknown, stinks up the whole place like farts. A pickle jar sits inert, nary a pickle floating inside. A sprig of grapes wilts on its vine. Jeremy shuts the door. “We don’t have any food,” he calls out to Dog, the dog. Dog barks. Jeremy makes a motion with his hands like what is he supposed to do about this, moves to the living room, and commences with his morning fretting routine. First, he backs his body

THE SENTIENT, BUDDHIST TOMATO GREETS ITS DESTINY by Christy Tending

June 9, 2024

We have 100 words for green, none of which they are privy to, and all of which are an essential part of this process. We reach our way toward the sun, our skin stretching to accommodate the water in our bellies, surrounding next year’s seeds for next year’s tomatoes. It is not insignificant to remember that we hold infinite life. That there is our finite purpose, and there is the part of us that, invincibly, will live on in every year to come, so long as this land exists, so long as someone is willing to accept volunteers. She runs

A FINAL AND PERSONAL PRINCIPLE by Sean Cavanaugh

June 6, 2024

Connor’s room had big windows and blinds with strings that touched the floor, and which were always drifting unevenly, a little to the left or to the right, halfway up or basically closed, but always open slightly because of an interceding object or a crease in the PVC, so the sunlight was partial and unfulfilled. There were a few old trophies on his dresser and a fishbowl, forever bubbling, with two statuettes and a little red beta. In front of the bed was a large TV, and to the side was a small leather couch where he’d sit with his

BODY AS CURSED OBJECT: An Interview with Christopher Zeischegg

June 4, 2024

How do you know when you’ve arrived? Christopher Zeischegg’s Creation: On Art and Becoming (Apocalypse Party, 2024) presents the many violences we can inflict and invite, breathing breakneck life into fathomless yearning. In a series of essays and auto-fictional psycho-sexual fevers, Zeischegg delivers an examination of hunger. Appetite for sex and death, sure, but the book’s title points the way. One day will be the day of our death, and on that day we will have arrived at—something. If the fates back down and give us more time, it will be a day of becoming, like all days, like today.

GODSPEED by Reid Sharpless

June 3, 2024

Antioch looked good, good, good. Red crosses on white banners blazed over the citadel, framed by the smoke of smoldering pyres and the grapevines grown fat with dusty fruit on the hills outside the city—and all this on a cool summer afternoon. Sir Godfrey of Handover resolved to make note of this fine moment in his journal of gratitude as soon as the Lord’s work was accomplished. “It all looks so good, doesn’t it, Clive?” The skull Sir Godfrey held nodded half-heartedly, then turned southward toward Jerusalem. “I know, I know,” said the knight. “Patience, dear friend.” Clive, of course,

THE STUYVESANT BEE #216 by Mike Topp

June 2, 2024

3 MICROS by [sarah] Cavar

May 31, 2024

Elephants think they are the size of dogs Who can fault them, outwitting their great heft? And I am the size of Grammy’s voice at the burnt crack beneath her knife. Her grandmother, mème, would eat two toasts per day, no grease, between her prayers alone. Face against the floor. Grammy takes hers with coffee and a camel. An earlier version of this piece contained incriminating information on but I got rid of her. An earlier draft of this piece contained incriminating information on 1 2 3 4

CREMATING A SNAKE by Dylan Cloud

May 30, 2024

It happened fast—a small wound opened in his side one day and soon his eyes were sunken, his mouth black. The doctors seemed to know even less than I did. He’d been so lively when they’d seen him, writhing as they placed him on the scale, lapping up the stale smells of the exam room. He tasted the air like a child in snow, curious, eager to devour the world. How could I make them understand? I had seen the sickness enter through his cut, the flicker of his being suffocated by pain. The pink infection crawling up his belly:

OBJECT BIOGRAPHIES by Brittany Thomas

May 29, 2024

We drove to Dorset to be alone, not to hunt fossils. We drove south to sit in silence, to read books by bayed windows, to feed a tiny wood stove pieces of the year. We let ourselves be washed by the shoreline, our sore city spirits cleansed like frail Victorians suffering hysteria. What more can anyone ask of an English October? Here the Fossil Wardens beg your help: please take what you find. You see, our fossils make their way out of 66 million years of mud and clay to the Jurassic Coast only to fall on the beach and