Malarkey Books // Excerpt from STILL ALIVE
. . . and Philip knows that I mean Philip, and Leroy responds: my dear, if you do, you kiss him for us both. So I do. Philip’s mouth is small and the kiss is wet and fine and good and then Leroy turns Philip’s head and kisses him too, longer, while I brush Philip’s hair from his eyes and run my hand slowly down his back. . . .
Maudlin House // SURVIVORS
Most people said boys were violent, but those people didn’t know girls, not in their growing pain bones, when they were too smart for their own good (or at least what anyone wanted to hear) and to a one: the secret purveyors of shallow graves in the backyard, waiting for a chance to push someone in...
Rejection Letters // ANTVILLE
In the ant town, in the child’s mind, the ants are all friends and they leave every morning to go work in the yard. Some of the ants are garbage ants and they clean…
Hobart // MOSKVA
It was one a.m., Moscow time, which meant five p.m. in New York. None of us were thinking about New York though. We were thinking about how our feet hurt in these stiletto boots and how goddamn cold it was…
Drunk Monkeys // SOBER
ever watch
someone
smoke
because they can’t just
stand outside
and
Los Angeles Review // HUSBANDRY
One morning I awoke as a woman. I knew I was a woman because I had seen women before. It was cold and my new body was shivering and so I stretched my new arms above my head and then walked on my new legs…USBA
Malarkey Books // THE DESERVING
You meet people—I call them meat people—who think riding the bus is quirky. They’ve got so much money that we bus people should eat them, but no one’s willing to take the first bite (yet). I bet Bezos tastes like stressed pork, best slow roasted on warm…
Pittsburgh Poetry Journal // OLD DOG
to be honest I used to wish he would die the way you wish dinner would be ready
you know the kind of wish you know will be fulfilled someday but you don’t know when and then he almost did die in the winter when he fell
Hobart // HYMN FOR THE BLOOMINGDALES RESTOCKER WHO WHISTLED THROUGH HIS CHIPPED TOOTH
we worked the closing shift and weekends at the bloomingdales soho that holiday season
PANK // DEAD BIRD
sidewalk forgotten and flat from too many run-overs, step-overs, stand-ons and the feathers frayed and the beak crushed and the eyes gone and the feet embedded and the guts eaten and
