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Abecedarian
By Christina M Scott
photo by Engin Akyur on Pexels
At night, she feels for the invisible restraints clutching her throat.
Bound by circumstance, she’s unable to freely breathe.
Coveting the blade in her hands,
Death is her fateful companion.
Everyone dies alone.
Forgotten memories of better moments dance at the edge of her mind.
Guilt has set up home here in her thoughts,
Has taken up so so much space, with no intent to leave.
Inescapable shock paralyzes and pervades her fleshy shell to
Just below her rib-cage, -
Petty Criminals
by Drew Anderla
photo by Arry Yan on Unsplash
There was a shitty bar I used to go in the East Village to that was demarcated only by a red neon rooster in the front window. Before 11, there would be disco music playing and red lights illuminating the space, but rather than dancing, or drinking, or even making eye contact, men would just pool around the perimeter of the room obsessively checking their cell phones. It was decidedly less like a bar at this early hour than it was like the DMV, with everyone anxiously waiting for their number to be called.
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Consumption
photo by Joshua Coleman on Unsplash
by Philip Anderson
1.
She was determined not to feel one way or another about Dan or his birthday, so Rebecca flirted with a gay guy at the international art book fair in Berlin. She was there as the representative of Moorland Books, a small press based out of Oakland that she and a friend had founded years earlier at San Francisco Art Institute.
“What did you do at SFAI?” he asked. “What’s your medium?” His name was Bunny. He was a photographer, had gone to RISD,
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Personal History of the Cherry Bomb
by Bart Plantenga
photo: collection of the author
You and I cannot believe our eyes anymore. Observe: A man on a glimmering stretch of walk in a tight, shiny suit, the kind start-up guys wear, was jimmying the lock on my bike with what could have been a hunting knife.
“HEY!” Startled, he pivoted and dashed off. I gave chase because I’d been reassured by characters seen in crime dramas that chase scenes usually end with their man in cuffs.
He was young, so it surprised me to be gaining on him so quickly.
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Memories of Drinks Past
by Michael Cannistraci
It was 1979 in Los Angeles. I was twenty-two, struggling as an actor, and struggling in general. My dreams of stardom had fizzled after graduation from college; aside from taking expensive acting classes, I wasn’t performing anywhere.
I got a job going door to door, recruiting men for a government vasectomy study. The work was easy, but the pay was lousy, and I had to buy my own gas. My girlfriend suggested I try bartending to make a living after she observed a bartender in a funky, dive surfer bar in Venice Beach counting a wad of cash on one of our dates.
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“Morning Snow” by Cho Ji Hoon Translated from the Korean by Sekyo Nam Haines
photo by Gerard Franciosa
Wouldn’t you know
without opening a window,
the snow has fallen
on Chun Mountain
The delicate bulb of daffodil
would have
known it first.
In the deepening night
by the lamplight
worries swarmed densely like butterflies.
In my dream
as the snow fell on me
I walked alone on the snow blurring meadow.
