Archives

EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF MY CAPACITY by Barbara Lock

February 21, 2022

One time I punched a wall that I thought was made of plasterboard but was in fact concrete. Either way, I would have broken my hand. The side of my fist near my pinky crunched up and my girlfriend told me I was a lunatic. Stop it, stop it, she said. Then she covered her face with a shroud, which irritated me to no end. I wore a white wool sweater in the style of Irish fishermen last year which placed me fifteen years too far in the past, or possibly the future. It’s hard to know. My appearance was

STICK FIGURES by Sara Solberg

February 18, 2022

In an eastern New Mexico desert, amid a forest of mesquite and bluestem grass, overlooking nothing but miles upon miles of iron-pressed, sunbaked earth, sits the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP for short). On the surface, it looks like any other government base: a simple grid of unremarkable squat buildings, the tan color of which bleeds into the surrounding arid landscape. But step into one of the elevators that spend their days bobbing up and down WIPP’s vertical mine shafts, ferrying hard-hatted workers between ground level and the ancient salt bed 2,150 feet below, and it’s a different story. One

PORTRAIT OF A FLORIST IN THE DESERT IN PARTS by Dylan Smith

February 16, 2022

1 My van broke down on a mountain north of Marfa, so I had it towed back to Santa Fe where a mechanic named Ever repairs transmissions. I talk to Ever every day. Every time Ever answers I have to explain to him it’s me—the kid with the tagged-up van. My sister lives with an unemployed florist in this complex in the desert. The florist offered to pick me up from Ever’s; to drive me ever deeper into this desert to visit with my sister. What a guy. In my portrait of the florist, he will be sitting at my

CAROUSEL BAR / DOWN IN HOLY CROSS by Autumn Holladay

February 14, 2022

Carousel Bar I miss 99-cent margaritas served at the old strip from 6:00 a.m. to noon. I’d sit and sip and watch the sex workers rest on slot machine stools after their shift. Most tourists weren’t around at that hour—just the cleaners and the junkies and the loners, and I thought they were my kind of people. The bartender invited me to shower with her after her shift. I believed there was no better way to spend my last day in Vegas. Her name was Holly. She wore a leather corset and when she took it off, tattoos took

A RIOT OF THE HUMAN HEART by Jillian Luft

February 11, 2022

Boston is burning itself over a baseball game. Outside of Fenway, the local evening news zooms in on a few torched sedans. Undercarriages in flames like hibachi grills. White boy ruddy faces rejoicing. Game 4 of the 2003 ACLS. A Red Sox victory. I care about baseball because I love you. I want to wake you up to celebrate Johnny Damon and Pedro Martinez and all those other shaggy-haired rascals hellbent on breaking the curse. Once you view the game highlights, I want you to bang me against the TV, so my bare ass kisses static. I want you to

CRAPPY JOB FAMILY by Michael Seymour Blake

February 10, 2022

VIRGINS by K-Ming Chang

February 9, 2022

Sixth grade was the year I met Melanie. She’d transferred from private school, Catholic, and around her neck was a copper locket with the Virgin Mary’s portrait inside it. It was the first white person I’d ever seen, minus the wasian in our class who had freckles even in the crack of her ass. The first time Melanie showed me what was inside her locket, we were changing together in the concrete-walled locker room, right in front of the window spattered with flies that spanned the gym teacher’s office. Everyone knew those were the worst lockers to get, the ones

LINDSAY LERMAN on film with Rebecca Gransden

February 8, 2022

What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up? I saw Liquid Sky in high school, and although much of it was mostly just weird to me because of how young and clueless I was, the amazing blacklight monologue scene and its “cunt that kills” focus (and its 80s underground punk aesthetic in general) seemed transgressive to me in ways that were thrilling and subtle. Also, the first person I fell really, really in love with was older than me and loved Prince. Because of this person, Purple Rain was

Y by Thomas Thatcher

February 7, 2022

I picked up the BB gun. I carried it to the road over my shoulder. Then eventually I pointed it at an oncoming car. The driver didn’t see me. He was driving slowly and he didn’t see me with the BB gun. He was about to hear Tsshh Krr. Copper-coated premium BB’s. I thought it might have cracked the windshield but it hit and skipped off the windshield. Boom and the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand (Rev.8:4) We needed bread and I didn’t have

FIFTY-FIVE AND OLDER by Christopher Notarnicola

February 4, 2022

I’m about to be sick on the front porch. Granddad is at the back, beating his cane against the screen door to scare the Muscovy ducks. The neighbors understand—nobody wants duck mess on the walkway. We’ve split a buttered bagel and yesterday’s half pot. He’s probably finishing breakfast while my first bite slips from my tongue in a string of saliva, landing like egg yolk in the flowerbed. I gag. The neighbors have a hard time with my prolonged presence, though no one seems to have heard my heaving. Drum and bass in the front drive after midnight, and in