> read issue Lara Frankena “Plume” Neil Carpathios “Do Not Disturb” Daisy Alioto “Zeus” Emilie Kneifel “<3” Eva Stefanidis “What to Do While Waiting for Your Luggage to Arrive in a Hong Kong Hotel Room” Elizabeth McLagan “All Around Is Passing, Mark Rothko” Cate McGowan “The World Will Blow” Jessie Eikmann “Love Poem: Inadequate […]
Category Archives: Issue 24
Plume by Lara Frankena
The F train judders to a halt, then resumes its crawl towards Manhattan. Across from me sits a man in a black wool coat. I have a book. He has lint, which he has been culling since I got on at 7th Avenue and 9th Street. On the other side of the carriage is a […]
Do Not Disturb by Neil Carpathios
Someone has hung it on my front door. It dangles from the knob. Stolen from a hotel, no doubt. Probably some neighbor kid did it on a dare. But wait. Ominous music starts to play. Like the soundtrack from Jaws. I stand in sweat pants, head swiveling for clues. From somewhere the deep voice of […]
Zeus by Daisy Alioto
I am sitting in the window of a Starbucks in Tribeca when a man asks me to watch his stuff while he goes to the bathroom. He tells me he just spent the night in jail. “I told the younger guys in there, every time your mother washes your clothes she’s thinking about the day […]
<3 by Emilie Kneifel
i less than three the fact that the heart emoticon dices love into something minuscule. a sum smaller than even a digit. almost as imperceptible as i want to be. i, almost nothing, almost breathing, listen to my maman tss tss read over texts for the sending. listen to her vacuum, little crumbs tinkling, clack […]
All Around Is Passing, Mark Rothko by Elizabeth McLagan
These paintings were to be his passport to a more luminous world, not encumbered by our nouns and adjectives, our interpretations which always fall short. Dore Ashton Passport photograph, signature, official stamp. Harmless blue, nothing blue, lost in the bottom of the bag blue. Encrypted, entombed, the vault of who you are. With a word […]
The World Will Blow by Cate McGowan
An aggressive vine eats its way across the South. It devours parking lots, clawing through Florida all the way to the Lake Fairy Inn’s foundations. Tendrils weave along the motel’s rusted railings, its rotted jambs. Creepers crawl through cracks, coming inside, taking over Ben’s brain. / In these conditions, he gets angry, his plans can’t […]
Love Poem: Inadequate Spider by Jessie Eikmann
On our first two dates, we stood in the dim street, you looking around at nothing, wondering if you should kiss me. Our last date, your lip imprints were so indistinct they could have belonged to an old lover, my mother, a stranger. My insides still unraveled out of habit. I jumped from your gutters […]
The Fourth Pig Made His House out of Sequins by Jessie Eikmann
They said it was the worst fucking idea they’d ever heard. I looked at the straw and sticks (horses. the Amish. Transcendentalism.) and bricks (inner city. Samuel Slater. Modernism.) and decided that mine had to be the most fabulous house ever made. I cemented it with glitter glue and imagined that when the wolf showed […]
Come and see the seals in sunny West Kirby! by Guy Elston
Take the Merseyrail from Lime Street, (they call it the Miseryrail round here, the locals have a famous sense of humour) or Central, or any of the other Liverpool stations, and ride until the very last stop on the Wirral line. Turn right out of the station, past the Victorian hotel, now a Wetherspoon’s, past […]
If I Had a Cemetery by Jory Post
for Lance I’d carve totem poles in place of headstones. They’d tell whole stories, better than inscriptions. They’d be the right height: five to six feet for men and women, twenty-one inches for babies. I’d hand-paint them. Crushed strawberries for red. Melted chocolate truffles for brown. The skin of eggplants for purple. […]
A Telescopic View by Jory Post
I was told by someone years ago not to write about the moon. That it was overused. A cliché. That was before I started writing poetry. But now, how can I resist? By avoiding the usual metaphors. By not having the rays of moonlight land on rippling waves at midnight. By never having the moon […]
Go Figure by Chet Corey
My life changed in a minute. It turned around on a dime. No, it must’ve been larger. It could’ve been a quarter. And it took more time. Infinitely more time to circumnavigate E pluribus Unum. Yet it seemed I’d gone nowhere, as if I’d been spinning my Goodyears bald, burning doughnuts in an empty parking […]
Aviator by Tracey Nguyen
The heat in my legs is similar to being with you except there is no release. I can hunger and hurt. Why does my new laundry detergent smell like sweat? My room is too clean for this. Nothing is knocked over and there is no tension. I am too comfortable. I am only aching for […]
What to Do While Waiting for Your Luggage to Arrive in a Hong Kong Hotel Room by Eva Stefanidis
Look through the window and into the night. You are a small black dog with a fluorescent collar. A red and yellow eel preserved in fluid. A paper wasp weaving through the air. Breathe. Note the symphony of demolition: the layers of people who built this city now dead. Feel them clogging your throat like […]
Dirty underwear by Bill Rector
Travel decals cover the suitcase like barnacles on the hull of a trireme. A frayed rope is cinched around its leather chest. Odysseus heaves the suitcase onto the sag next to his. Where’s the remote? Under the cushion. He cracks a beer, then another. Did you think I didn’t want to see the world? Jeopardy […]
To the Man on Karmada Street Frying Eggs in His Underwear by Josh Olsen
I can see you, you know? I can see you. I’m not trying to see you, but you’re difficult to ignore. Your window is open, and your lights are on. And you’re standing in front of your stove – fork in one hand, skillet in the other – wearing no more than a white undershirt […]