THE STUYVESANT BEE 221 by Mike Topp
MOMS FOR LIBERACE !! WOODY WOODPECKER !! YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, PIGS !!
MOMS FOR LIBERACE !! WOODY WOODPECKER !! YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, PIGS !!
But today there was a cabin. A small, rough thing. Caked in leaves. Inside, they found old cans and an old bed and an old table. Inside, they found a calendar stuck on July 1992.
I found a wallet today that contained $200, some credit cards, and some family pictures—my family now.
To refer back to Jeanette’s advice again for a second, it’s not just that no one will care if you don’t do it. In a lot of cases, it’s that no one will even know if you don’t do it. For me, ‘doing the thing’ has changed my life.
In your mind, is there nothing better than coming home after a punishing day in the asteroid mines, firing up a space joint, and taking a blissful sound bath in the pure vibes pouring forth from your carefully curated LP collection?
For decades The Stuyvesant Bee has been a password known only to the LITERARY ELITE, whispered at CIA-sponsored cocktail parties, discussed in zoom meetings hosted by Paris Review interns, loudly recited at salons & saloons around the reading world.
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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…
The ballroom was empty except for stacks of chairs along the walls and the man staring at the ceiling. With no one around him in that large space he looked very small. I waved my arms over my head but the man didn’t notice and kept on staring at the ceiling. He was off in his own world. I pulled out my weed pen, which most people mistook for a flash drive. Even though weed was now legal, I was still secretive. Learned furtive behavior from all my high school friends having misdemeanors for possession. The Toy Voyager conference was…
The two of them live in a small house that overlooks a somehow smaller lake. He has family money and neither of them have to work, but he finds meaning in his work (development—of what? we’re not quite sure) and she writes poems. The house is ancient and the rooms are cold. They often lay in bed until long past midmorning, even sometimes past noon. They argue about who will make coffee, always finally decided by who has to pee first. It’s usually her. The house, which the locals say is as old as bones, is older. It is rickety…