liar, liar Once we’ve locked ourselves into the hallway bathroom—which is ridiculously nice for a frat house, what the hell—I take one look at the group and decide that our only solution is to lie our way out.
Please Now Submit an Author Photo, .JPG Preferred There’s no one here to take an unguarded photo of me biting on a hangnail while staring at the screen working out a better word for ‘broken.’
Wikipedia Speed Runs Instructions: Find a path from the beginning article to the ending article using only article links.
Only the Good (Guinea Pigs) Die Young That gruesome adolescent heartbreak you go through again and again and again and then evolves into real heartbreak, the kind you can’t just shrug off as kid feelings. It starts here.
Seven It's that country near the bottom of the Earth, the one that only comes up in the news when we owe someone else billions or when people find out our president's son is a drag queen which is genuinely one of our greatest and only sources of pride.
when the house is quiet, when your mind wanders, when your mind whispers loved not be loved not be loved
How to Grow a Nice Girl / On Nursery Rhymes, Suffrage, Spice, and Everything (Not) Nice / That’s What Memory is Made Of “Why can’t a nice-looking girl like you act nice,” the principal asked.
Catching Smoke A couple of cards, a 4 and a King, lay on the green felt in front of you. You clutch a cup of coffee with your left hand. There’s a stack of casino chips in your right. You're shuffling the chips over and over.
A Poetry Found in the Chest of A Dead Soldier If I keep your poetry, / And I'm killed, / Will I be buried with it?
Questions after you said I died a million times in you Who sings honeyed dirges for the dead while their warm hands make love with someone else’s warm hands?
In it Sorrow a monotonous tune, like the weeping of this lonesome cunt. I cry because I am two hours behind his time zone always, and maybe that means I am also two hours behind grieving us always.
Litterbug Sea otters shivering, succumbing to the cold without the properties of their insulating fur, lifeless paws slipping from each other’s grasp. Dolphins scattered, bursting like smooth grey fireworks away from the foul stench that permeated the water.
Call It What It Is at fifteen the intake nurse clacked her nails until / social phobia, ED-NOS appeared beside diagnosis
Maybe a Butterfly Will Sit on Us But every day we also hoped something would change, that our Mortuary House would have dainty laced curtains and a round table in the center draped in white table cloth.
Draft 1/Draft 5 I write creative nonfiction, and that means that I lay in your arms and think about how I would describe it, our bodies next to each other in the dark while it storms outside, how I ask you to leave the fan off so we can hear it.
Exposition I survived a knife between my ribs, / strings cutting into sponge-berry flesh, / blooming rose wound around my wrists.
How to Clean Filters: An instruction manual You heard it’s best to step away from it for a while. You decide to let the story rest for a few days/weeks/months. It sounds like you deserve a break, anyway; you watch as your computer switches off.
A response to, in conversation with, with regards to, The Entire [REDACTEDRED] of [REDAC TE DRE DACTE] Long spidery clockwork orange lashes and you hate to be shushed like that by your mum or other grown-ups or anyone. And you will still not know what sex is for years, years after you did it even.
to the ends of the earth i will take your hand. / smooth my thumb over the callouses / liver-spotted, amber nails cracked from worried teeth
My Life Has a Purpose, My Life Has a Plan Now he’s LA and airplanes and travels a lot. In high school Dane was “I don’t want anyone to know we’re related if you talk about church stuff” and “you can’t say that here.”
Dinner for One: An Internal Monologue I cannot fathom sitting alone in a restaurant with a horde of costumed men breathing down my neck, pitying the lone eater, wondering how fast I will empty the table for a group of noisy jobless rich brats who would order five times more and tip a little too generously.
It Girl Corpse: Or, I Cut up the National Enquirer and Turned It Into Shitty Poetry Love At First Like / FIND TRUE LOVE / talk about sex
Today, We Are Making Gazpacho There is almost no reason to make gazpacho at any other time of the year. Try to make this with winter grocery store tomatoes and it’ll be like drinking a Michelob Ultra instead of an actual beer.
The Dog Days of Living Just before midnight, my cousin, her owner, is asleep at a hotel in Florida that does not allow dogs, but is so luxurious that she would leave Holly in New Jersey under the care of a 21 year old.
A Thief in the Caucasus Prometheus hadn’t seen a son so close in eons. He spoke words from Armenia, a tongue which demanded much from the throat.
Spineless I swam. I dove under, let go of the float and remembered my body. I’ve been obsessed with invertebrates and wanted to be spineless. I came back to the surface and swam to the concrete retaining wall at the edge of the lake to pull myself out of the water.
Support Group for Miracle Survivors There were sympathetic yawns; everyone had heard all this before.
Surviving the Forest Perhaps it is my subconscious telling me to die in the pines and the snow, better than to die alone in the root cellar, where tossed-out tools are ornaments that shine and sing.
Have You Ever Been Asked To Leave An Airport Chili’s? Tell me where to go, what to do / when I get there. Just bring me / best practice, nothing that will blur
I'm Sorry We're Getting Married I love you, Harry. And I’m excited that we can be married for most of our lives. What does that mean, though, when we can already love each other for most of our lives whether the government is involved or not.
Show Me the S on Your Chest when every night terror wakes / and feeds on the ice / unchecked in your veins
Did Being Neurodivergent Mean I Hated Boybands and Mondays? ‘I’m a freak, I'm a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here, I don’t belong here’ -Creep, Radiohead 1992
Film School Planet The phantom trapped inside appeared before the critic on his couch and offered him the customary three wishes.
Richard Zenith I’d stolen it accidentally when I lived across from LA City College from in front of an ostentatious antiques store two blocks from my studio, a dingy shop I supposed was in foreclosure but was actually holding an outdoor sale.
The Sara Chain Letter A bunch of text, on a forum post or in an email, telling the reader they had four minutes to send the letter to ten people or else they would drop dead in a week. And other multitudinous variations.
WE THOUGHT IT WAS OUR ABILITY TO LOVE THAT MADE US HUMAN, BUT IT TURNS OUT IT WAS ACTUALLY OUR ABILITY TO SELECT EACH IMAGE CONTAINING A BOAT Is there a difference between sonar and bad vibes?
Casualties of War For the rest of his life, he’ll tell people this was the first Super Bowl he remembers.
Broken Bricks A red brick wall, the ground along it lined / with chips of brick; how came they in those piles?
piece by piece we shut it down but I have not forgotten. I have no idea how / I should be taking those words now,
Clicky-Thing: a modern review of the Carhartt Relaxed Fit Washed Duck Sherpa-Lined Utility Jacket with a 2 Warmer Rating Anyway, I decided that this was the year I’d get a proper winter jacket again.
Blood The dog knows to curl up behind a chair or slip under the bed. But the man and the bag fill the space between the dog and chair.
I WANT TO KNOW THE CHICKEN’S NAME I also want to ask if it knows / what a road is. If it ever actually / knows where it’s going. Or why
8 Ways to Get Out of Debt Fast The trick is to pick articles that are destined for spammy blogs. They don’t care about quality and they usually come with a list of keywords that need to be stuffed into 250 words of content.
We read to know we are not alone, But I told this car full of friends this truth I’d never even spoken to myself.
It Started with a Feeling, and Now My Boyfriend and I are Sitting in a Clinic for a Pre-Conception Consultation, and I Can’t Stop Worrying About My Unknown Future The doctor says I won’t have many changes since I’ve been on hormones for so long, but still—
The Jewel on Main It wasn't your liver, though we had bets whose was worse. The odds always in favour that you’d never go first. It wasn't your heart though it's been broken many times. And it wasn’t your sugar from drinking outside the lines.
Hungry Ghosts This year a group of teenagers has joined in the occasion, a mix of locals and foreigners. They parade amongst the younger children wearing lurid rubber masks: lolling tongues and murderous grins.
An Eighty-Year Joke And there's so little time to / even consider it with all of the / living we need to take care of.
Afterparty I just wanted to tell you that the kind stranger who held my hair back at the end of the night got quite a mouthful about how lovely I think you are.
Hometown Tour And in the daydream, he smiles, he smiles big and a lot, he's happy, I can't believe how happy, over such small things, and he says, that's cool, oh that's cool too, oh that's so cool...
When Meteorologists are Seers Every Cloud is an Omen I think it's more likely I'll scoop up stones & save them in my shoes
Sunset Point She climbed onto the back of one, shouting something about becoming a “spring break legend.”
Operating Instructions the honesty of that gives me / a peach pit in my stomach / a teardrop in / my throat
There's Nazis In Them There Fredonian Hills The first thing that Selma saw in her Art and Architecture classroom was a shakily drawn peace sign on the blackboard. “Peace for Fredonia,” it read, just as shakily, underneath.
MILES SHOWED ME HIS TRUMPET Miles Davis lived around the block from me / deep in the upper west side of Manhattan island.
Sweet Paradise I’ve never felt so emotionally close to an ice-cream. This remarkable feat from a loaded cone demanded my respect. Reaching out, my finger touched the melting solution that had crossed its great divide.
Meet & Greet with Zaphod Beeblebrox seven galaxies over —they are interstellar / radio savvy, in the very least. And yeah, / they’ve been in contact for about two years,
Travel Tip #3: Antarctica & Growth Not just a memory, but / an invisible & teeming / with life magnetic field,
Eye See You When the mailman came pedaling by on his 3-wheel cargo bike, Wilhelmina poked her head out of the dormer window, and in her cheeriest sing-song voice issued a hellooo-oo. When he looked up, she gave the queen’s wave.
Dad's Toe Later, while I’m telling Jamie the story of how Dad chopped his toe off, I get two texts from Dad’s phone. The first one is an overexposed close-up of a pearl white bone surrounded by what looks like gray and white chicken flesh. The second text says: “This is my toe.”
Paper, Plastic, and Glue Her parents discussed it. Cried. Discussed it again. Her mother said she’d like to read Jennifer at least once.
Cry-baby Have you ever held Death’s hand? I have. I have pulled it to my cheek and told it to slap. Stupid girl, brilliant bones. Feel it. Feel it!
Family Anatomy “I always knew my son was too good for public school,” his mother would say at the dinner table. “He doesn’t need to squabble with the riffraff in California."
What if We Kiss in the North Brooklyn Industrial Business Zone? We were trying to make our way back / To the subway before sunset.
When Peanut Butter is On the Line: A Study of Genetically Mutated Hamsters, Territoriality, and Bloodshed Inspired by research conducted by the Georgia State University Neuroscience Institute
Taylor Swift Releases ‘Midnights (3am Edition)’ or, My Friend and I Watch *That* Episode of BoJack Horseman I was dancing around to Fearless and / Glee when eyes were set on me. At nineteen,
Gothic Pixie Bipolar Bitch I lounge over these Victorian banisters while old family / secrets burst through every hinge in the house.
OVERTURE: SOMEWHERE IN NEW JERSEY, 2009. IT’S A WEEKNIGHT IN AUGUST. Your arms are sloppy around his veiny orange neck. They say the juice heads do it best, but he wouldn’t even pay for your funnel cake...
A Total Schenectady of the Heart. My transparent invitations via pop songs shouted hoarse/ summarized my status as an ill-tuxedoed groom
Shaun or Sean or Shawn says you're a great friend, 2006 sunken as a memory in the ember sunset / in that small place subliminal space in your head
Elephant Sinking Into a Mud Pit And for two more days the rescuers try to drag out / the grey giant with ropes — to no avail.
An Afternoon Wedding The wedding planner skirts around him, out of the radius of his thrashing. She doesn’t have time to fight his hands away and explain that she’s not his bride.
Accident, Maryland Here old ladies brush their teeth with Desitin. Men step on the toes of priests. Strangers elbow strangers, their arms swinging back-and-forth like bells in a grandfather clock.
Shedding The gentleman in the chair stood up, paid, and breezed by Avery on his way out. They shook their hair off their face and made their first eye contact with the barber.
Sucking Candy Demise The man, not yet having nothing left to live for, agrees that the next such sucking candy he consumes will be the last;
The Revolution “Cut it out. You and I both know you don’t have a revolutionary bone in your body, not to mention the fact that, as a lover, your lack of creativity is matched only by your lack of ambition.”
"Every little boy needs a dog," barks your mother That's odd, too. Your parents don't go out in winter. You pick up whatever they need.
Shopping malls and parking lots and all the places I knew I liked girls The first time I was misgendered was at a Taco Bell in Crossgates Mall in upstate New York. Or rather, this is the first time I specifically remember being misgendered.
███come to earth ██████████ An erasure from “Welcome to Earth” by Sturgill Simpson (A Sailors Guide to Earth)
Brace ███ ██████ (████ A Little) An erasure from “Brace For Impact (Live A Little)” by Sturgill Simpson (A Sailors Guide to Earth)
The Motor Oil (In Bloom) A découpé poem after Sturgill Simpson’s A Sailor’s Guide to the Earth (2016)
Give Me an Opinion *i wasn’t sure how to form / an opinion, so i decided to / watch some YouTube videos / to see if they could show me how.
Dialogues with a Stray Cat incidentally, I wonder if any animal could actually take residence on my patio once my sister sends her furniture over.
Miranda Cosgrove (and Carly Shay) You’re a little more into iCarly than your peers, for a lot longer than them, too. You find yourself in the iCarly fandom, reblogging posts at a rate that loses you followers.
Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III You recite his lyrics like they are a prayer, like it’s not a coincidence FOB has the same amount of letters as GOD.
Smoke When I was a kid, one of my special interests was Old Hollywood. This was my parents’ fault for allowing me exposure to the genre.
Madmartigan in the Mercedes He was like a man but not quite. He was a fictional character that vanished from my view when I pressed “stop” or “eject.” In this way, he was better than a man.
La Neige The phantoms in the streetlight had returned to their posts. The ghost of her father hung in her mind. The 7/11 was open for snacks.
Public Letter/Hocus Opus Press/RE: Haywire Ray In their rejection letter for my article--Dispatches of Haywire Ray, the biography and reflections of the titular illusionist--the Editor of Hocus Opus Press denounced my work as “a pure work of imagination,”
Fugitives We wait in the car while the engine purrs / and I shiver in my Woody sweater / like it’s raining outside
Lonely Without Friends The father stares down ten-year-old Darien. The boy rises and walks to the corner to wait for the light, then steps into the street and picks up the bottle. He brings the bottle back to his father.
The Relaxed Version of a Man I sip my drink and read a book. The drink is fruity, over sweet, and alcoholic -- I hate drinking in the daytime, but I am on vacation and play the part. The book, it’s okay. If nothing else, it shades the irksome sun from my face.
Balaclava He ignored his customers’ penetrating glares and sly whispers and began stacking cage eggs.
teeth dreaming there are no giants / there are no talking fish / there is no megalodon, / the dream is over.
Mood Killer Droplets of sweat and rain threaded through the front of his hair as he blinked through the white lights in the front of the restaurant towards the large faux-rock counter.
trans culture is hating shirts Trans culture is finding an old t-shirt / from your bottom drawer, / and immediately putting it back / to avoid a weird nostalgic feeling.
The Agenda “For those of you who did arrive on time” he paused shooting Terence a glance, “the meeting today will be hideously punctuated by the untimely death of our colleague Terence. We are expecting the incident about halfway through the meeting, agenda item five.”
When the woman you have a crush on asks you to host a séance, you say yes You’re not sure if you’re sleepy or uncomfortable, if your heart is stopping every few seconds by your hand or hers, there is something rotten about being mortal and even this crush-love—
If Only for a Moment I found myself somewhere between pleasure and fear. Surely that unflinching stare was searching for the very essence of my soul.
What Remains Last Wednesday, there she was, sitting in the corner by the $675 splattered paint on wall by local artist installation when she saw it, approaching from the entrance and using the handicapped button to help it because without muscles it no longer had a strong grip.
Don't You Dare Take My Keys First, take the brown vase / take the one close to it too, the vase with oriental motifs
A Guide to Living and Dying on the Digital Frontier “Remind me again why you’re writing a burn piece about yourself.”
Poem After a Poetry Reading other title ideas included / Fear and Railing in New York / Getting Railed on a Hammock
Punk Poem viva la punk / viva el diablo / somewhere havin a laugh / they say god hates rock n roll / that’s ok because rock n roll hates god
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished The two detectives in front of me looked at each other, as if having a private conversation, and then back at me. The detective on the left, Detective Dowdy, leaned back in his seat and squinted. The disbelief in his eyes is clear.
Leaking At night I can feel my dreams crawl out and inject themselves into your side, I can feel the veins of the pillows pulsing through to each other.
Once Upon a Time in Maryland The times were far from happy, but they were stable and predictable in their badness, and that was almost good, in its own way.
Best in Show, Reserve Champion This is not Apple Strudel’s first showing. She’s been shown from the Milky Way to the Pisco Nebula.
Philosophic Fragments Love is a memory. Love is a memory that’s present, / A memory not resolved, not passing into past,
Desert Meadow All through winter life burnt; all through spring. / Autumn, a spoke on the same wheel, will repeat
Strange Uterus The fire danced, made the shadows quiver. The pile of mail, the letter opener on the cabinet, the single bookshelf: all creeping in at the edges of the darkness.
I’m glad I’m not rich because I’m pretty sure I’d be an asshole you can never be an ocean / if you’re afraid to make waves
Bearded It bifurcated at the chin and it bulged at the cheeks. It certainly did look like the objects being mimed.
Childlike Periodically, I've wanted to extend my youth, / When all the magic seemed to lose its spark,
Two Hooligans Dueling With Their Respective Finger Guns Eventually the two put their finger guns away as if it had been a draw as each one backed away to different sides of the room.
Not That Story Trouble was, there was a lot of trouble. Questions I didn’t understand, even though I worked there. A month or so before, I’d run into a group of art-school people sitting together around the curve of a bar, nice people, friendly.
Shuffle There has been silence in the car for much of the hour-long drive. You have been mostly present but what is there to say. Honey, I'm sorry that I wrapped the car around a tree and for the last few weeks I've been a vegetable doesn't seem to cut it.
Expedition Passport Blood showers on hot tin roof / Cain kills Abel to / Tenth Avenue jazz band tune / Blood mingles with sidewalk / Mingles with dandelion
A Sort of Homecoming I say my goodbyes to my parents and my sister. I expect you to pat my back, but instead you pull me into a hug and I breath in the aftershave you have recently started using. I want this moment to be the start of a love story.
Subscribe I measure the rest of the time in empty envelopes / and the mechanic whirring of a fleet of slicing jaws. / There are only so many ways to spell cancel, and I’ve seen them all.
Work I walked into Mr. Pfloe’s office and sat in the chair facing his desk. I could feel his eyes on me as I smoothed my skirt over my legs.
tic tac toe there’s so many options / all of the classics are there / pong, pacman, and others / but you decide to go with / tic tac toe / (your personal favorite)
Wearing Superman's Cape A student gave me Superman’s cape, a parting gift when leaving my class. I put it on to pick my daughters up, watched it flutter a little in the wind and I guess the glasses pull together the whole Clark Kent look. The little one sucks on the corner
86 Bacon Until We Get Another Brown Marker It might only be a 20 dollar hunk of cardboard from Target, but we threw it together in about half an hour with the proper A1 flap into the proper A1 slot and with a little coloring it’s a regular food truck slinging whatever we have on tap for
Axis of Gratitude Now please move that finger from the center of my left palm to the middle of my open wrist. This was the first movement you ever did when I met you standing at the bar like Samson.
Hold Your Breath If camping seaside & reading poetry & smoking comically large cigarettes is going Le Fou count me gone
Pokémon and Other Eternal Sins I liked to think that my spontaneous combustion was due to God not liking me very much
How Would You Rate Your Pain? Almost gnat-like—this annoyance of flesh, this cicada sound between bones.
Refriendship I'm going to listen to that Neyo song, because for some reason it always makes me feel better.
Bag Lady “But we’re dog people, Qiptyn.” Bathory’s vocal fry made the statement sound whinier than it was. “Emoji deserves the best.”
Bad Movie We’d met the night before at a Meetup group for shy people. She told me she was Nigerian, just passing through, wanting to escape the punishing heat of her hometown and a family trauma.
Why I Use Self Checkout “All those injuries, man. I can’t believe all those injuries. Think they can pull it out?”
The Thing About Two-Time Freestyle Skateboard Champion Mike Osterman Is That If You Ask Him to Walk the Dog, You’ll Have Piss All Over Your House Still, you are caught in Mike Osterman’s gravitational pull, like so many others.
The Way of the Poncho Cult They want to know if Doug has a message for its devoted followers, if it’s a force of good or evil, if it has chosen Gerard as its prophet.
Uno Reverse Blue, Back 2 U It’s as if landlords looked at that vitruvian man n’ decided / that every body has a one-track-mind. The golden ratio is just ur shitty prop;
I'll Say This Then I'll Shut Up by Sean Ennis It is true that there are too many guitars in this world, all the strumming and plucking. Grace puts on Lee Montgomery or Bob blabbermouth Dylan and it’s like she’s trying to hurt my feelings. “This is American music,” she says. We’re sort of
Observations Regarding the Incarceration and Rehabilitation of Eastern State Penitentiary Prisoner Number C-98xx At the trial, the convict’s mother, who wished to retain her dignity, sat stone-faced while the court pronounced her youngest son’s fate: first-degree murder, 30 years to life.
Safety First except it was there. Injury / happened to other people, / but I never gave it much thought.
The Ghost's Leavetaking Another wood knock. Hard to tell how far away, or even from which direction. The scene is an inversion now.
Colleagues and Friends It’s the first time in three months I’ve heard so much English, and between the bull and the barbeque, I can almost mistake it for home.
Unidentified Snack-Mix, Orange and Salty (Last Seen Possibly Becoming The Christ) There was comfort in all these things, like I was placing my isolated act of snacking in my recliner, alone in a small room, into a framework of collective experience.
Lengthy Footnote Covering Unusual Disturbances at the Township Council Meeting, County Ledger Entry No. 205599428a Of course, the entire Council, as a whole, was disgusted by Mrs. Cartwagon’s obvious lack of concern for the law, but we decided to let that go so that we could hear the rest of the story.
Embodying Language A visual poem by Jill McCabe Johnson - "The body is a situation" Melissa Mathewson
The Widowmaker Tried to Kill Me, But Failed Miserably I didn’t know I’d had a heart attack until the morning after, once the stent was in and I’d had a good night’s sleep flat on my back with a weighted pillow on my upper thigh where the surgeon cut into my femoral artery.
My Stuff Out in Tucson “My Stuff Out in Tucson” is an eerie foreshadowing of the events that unfold in the writer’s forthcoming novel, Good-Bye, Lo Siento. You can follow him on Twitter at @lakemarkham for updates.
Make a Wish Grown-ups were always telling us to make a wish; when blowing out our birthday candles, when finding a four-leaf clover, when snapping the wishbone on the chicken after Sunday lunch.
Shit Hawks “Anthony, look what I found.” Tara’s kid shakes me awake. When I turn my head, particles of sand come unstuck from my face. “It’s beach glass, right?”
Ode to the Desert Cottontail Of all the animals in the Mojave Desert, the desert cottontail is among the more overlooked.
My Road Trip with Rumphous When I find Rumphous, two miles outside of town, he has devoured a family of cats and is growling at a boy and his dad, who are locked in their car, too scared to get out.
Seussical Mask, shirt, sweatshirt, pants, socks, shoes, each a different shade of black. Sheet music. Clarinet. Bass clarinet. Backup reeds and backup reeds and backup reeds. Unnecessary pencil.