DOOMSDAY APOCALYPSE MELANCHOLIA BLUES by Nathaniel Duggan
It was an easy thing, that winter, to realize that you were not, in fact, you—rather you were the untitled, draft email of yourself, addressed to no one.
Nathaniel Duggan
Nathaniel Duggan is a former mattress salesman. His work has appeared previously in Hobart, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and New World Writing, among others. He lives in Maine.
BURRITO by Nathaniel Duggan
I decided to order the burrito. I pronounced “burrito” wrong. The word fell from me, flabbergasting and impossible.
LONELINESS AND HEARTACHE IN THE DISCARDED APPLE CORE PIT OF AMERICA’S ROTTED DREAM FOR AND OF ITSELF by Nathaniel Duggan
Lately Frank has been feeling especially Frank-like, his days reduced to the potato chip crumbs he has failed to brush from his lap—as if he, the essence of himself, is a shirt that can be slipped on or off and has been worn perhaps a few too many weeks in a row. He wets the bed more than when he was a child, although back then his piss was hot and searing as shame, whereas now it is simply cold as a metal unexpectedly touched. His sweat, too, is cold. His dreams are muggy as incest, bratty stepsiblings fucked. He…
IMITATION CRABMEAT by Nathaniel Duggan
Dad spends Christmas Eve on the beach killing green crabs, before he returns home to turn on all the holiday lights. The house flashes and dazzles like a landing strip. The sky, meanwhile, looks foreclosed. “You should’ve seen the fuckers,” he tells me, pinching his fingers to imitate claws. “Some of them big as your face.” He has no heat, furniture, or future, so we sit in lawn chairs in the living room, our breath glowing like neon. His expression is sour-smug: he is a man who knows his own expiration date. When he dies shortly thereafter—without complication—I bury him…