Archives

JAYNE MARTIN ON ADULT ISSUES with Rebecca Gransden

March 17, 2022

With The Daddy Chronicles (Whisk(e)y Tit Books, 2022), Jayne Martin returns to bruised memories. The book is driven to explore how recollection takes form, fragments made vivid, torn from deep wells and thrust into an attempt at order, a chronology, a way to make sense of an absent father. This absence dominates, and is bitterly ever-present. Martin strives to confront the irony in this, and with this collection of memory vignettes, reframes her past. When did you first have the impulse to tackle this subject? Was the form of the book apparent from the start? The book just erupted from

PASSION by Melissa Ostrom

March 16, 2022

Passion turned thirteen in the middle of July, and when the first light of this day, this special day, woke her and sweetened the darkness like milk stirred into coffee, Passion divided like a cell, turned into two Passions, a watching Passion, a watched Passion. Passion sensed Passion, keenly and with great interest. Herself. Her self. Passion thought, Here curls Passion on her side, under a worn sheet, her gaze turned to the paling window. The curve of her hip is slight. The arm hugging the pillow is slim. And there rises the sun. Pay attention, Passion, Passion ordered. Smell

THEY CAN LIVE WITHOUT FLIES by Michael Seymour Blake

March 14, 2022

She lay huddled and naked in bed, her skin a grayish black. Her brittle hair broke off at the slightest touch. I rested my head on her rigid body, hearing nothing. I inhaled—a dull, mossy smell. I called Dad. He came over right away. He tapped Mom a few times, then knocked on her like he was knocking on a door. He placed his ear against her open lips. “Get me a flashlight.” I brought him one. He shined light into her mouth. “What do you see?” He grabbed a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket. He

POTATO NECK by Genevieve Jagger

March 11, 2022

She isn’t the most beautiful woman I have ever seen but I haven’t seen a woman in eight months or more and am turning, quickly, to dust. By haven’t seen a woman I mean haven’t seen Leanne, though either way it’s hot sand, glass and friction. It’s a wonder my cabin doesn’t go up in flames, everything made of wood as it is, working on myself at night as I do. It would only take one spark. She is sitting out on a small mound of grass that I think of as the stoop, her back turned to me. It

I DON’T GET HOW ANYTHING WORKS ANYMORE: a conversation between Tyler Dempsey and KKUURRTT

March 10, 2022

TYLER DEMPSEY: Going to a music festival ten years after you didn’t like going to them in the first place. And, just not being able to get that feeling you could back then. Understanding from now on it’s a memory unreachable. I’ve never read a book that used this location/theme combination. Did you come up with that, you bastard? KKUURRTT: Hahaha I mean I wrote like three versions of this location before I found the theme of chasing a memory unreachable and they were all just pure fucking trash. 10K word false starts that will never see the light of

FACTS OF LIFE by Laetitia Keok

March 9, 2022

Male emperor penguins protect their eggs from the harsh Antarctic elements by balancing them on their feet. When I tell you this, you lift me up and balance me on your feet. I am four and weigh nothing. You are a mountain of a man. With my tiny feet stacked atop your larger feet, you hold my hands and start taking wide, steady steps. We pass the balcony, and I feel the warmth of sunlight as it filters through the glass door to fall onto our bodies. Our shadows dance on the floor tiles like puppets. Then, I am flying.

BIRTHDAY PRESENTS by Gary Fincke

March 7, 2022

Sixth: Her Reborn Baby Doll Her promised sister, it wasn’t, but her mother had selected the model featuring the optional beating heart and carried the gift-wrapped baby home bundled in a blanket as if sleet had begun to slant from a terrible sky. “What will you name her?” her mother said. “Bernadine,” the girl whispered, knowing not to say Darla, as she felt the doll’s heart pulse against her body. As soon as she kissed its face, she packed away her other dolls like winter clothes. But one morning, only four months later, when she pressed her ear on Bernadine’s

OUTING by Serkan Görkemli

March 4, 2022

By the time I show up for our weekly outing on Thursday evening, my friend Yaprak has already ordered the first bottle of red wine. We’re meeting on the patio of Büyük Truva Oteli, one of the oldest and most expensive hotels on the shore of the Dardanelles in downtown Çanakkale in northwestern Turkey. She beckons me with her left hand to our quiet corner. Her right hand puts out one of the many cigarettes she has already smoked. The night is young, and I’ve brought two packs of Camels just in case. I’m a little late, and I already

AFTER NOT LEAVING THE HOUSE FOR THREE DAYS by Quinn Forlini

March 2, 2022

Anna’s mother convinces her to go for a walk. The weather’s getting warmer. Anna feels like she’s been living inside a tunnel, or an artery. She’s thirteen. Last week she dyed her hair purple from a box at the drugstore and it’s ugly. She pulls her hair into a ponytail, feeling the roughness as it passes through her fingers from the cheap dye. Her mother tried to warn her, and that made her want it more. Her mother reminds her for the seventh time that it’s a bit chilly out, so at the last second, Anna grabs her dad’s black

FIGHT VIDEOS 1-3 by Julian Castronovo

February 28, 2022

I. The babysitter Bunny put me in the basement and locked the door. It was an old basement, a cellar. There was a torn up floral sofa and a boiler and a window that looked out at the bottom of a hole. The hole was maybe four feet deep and was lined with pieces of wood that kept it from collapsing into itself. I walked over and looked up through it. The sky was dark yellow. I went and sat on the sofa and watched videos of fat people slapping each other hard in the face. Then I heard