On my swallowed stone, I painted the weather inside a zebra stripe.

he is remembered // like a stoic painting. it looms over / his organ, static from years // untouched, nesting nutcracker
 / and country hymnal.

How the distances collapse when / moving at speed, several instances of relapse folded until one prolonged scene, an / abrupt start from sleep.

I get a haircut and scrub the stove, feeling unpeeled / from the old terror.

When she is young, the name “Mary” is very common. If Social Security records for the ranked popularity of baby names in any given year went back to the first century, “Mary” would be number one on the list for hundreds of years. Sometimes, when she is meeting a person for the first time, they ask her if she likes her name. Sure, she replies. It turns out they usually have an aunt or a great-aunt, a teacher or a boss, named Mary of whom they are not very fond.

Shelly is fifteen years old, and she is alive today. Shelly is only sometimes alive. Sometimes she is dead.

Call it oxymoron, where to shed is to gain worship, / polish escaping into the hidden temples of my teeth.

Online Exclusive fiction from Jessica Lee Richardson.

As long as I have been old enough to understand what the middle class is, it has been described as “shrinking.”

After Graham stopped returning my texts, I started leaving little parts of myself all over the Internet. In his early twenties, especially, Graham left doorways to himself everywhere—not just the normal abandoned social portals of MySpace and Friendster, but also a blog with a cursor shaped like a hot pink mouth. When I clicked on an entry, the disembodied lips smacked. Sickened, I kept clicking as the computerized sucking noise pulled me into page after page of journal entries, photos, digital check-ins at bars where he’d time-stamped his arrival.

clean of me, my rod, / creel, sturdy / shoes, jack knife.

You love to see it—discrete individual units realizing they are not / at all that. Like a grass field caught in wind, finally understanding / its purpose, I breathe with the sound of God breathing.

"Do you ever feel like/ you're just living/ the same day / over/ and over / and over again."

Take this cryptic correspondence as – a sound bite skirts my wonder.

Online Exclusive fiction from Dustin Hoffman.

Online Exclusives non-fiction from Darcy Jay Gagnon.

In early May we are driving south from Phoenix on Interstate 10. The land in every direction is sparsely vegetated—saguaro cactus, organ pipe cholla, barrel cactus, and mesquite. Dust blows across this big sandbox. The sky is hazy. To the east, in the distance, are what appear to be massive heaps of dirt left over from some grand construction project gone wrong. But this is a trick of light.

But come on, even Eve ate a dead baby dino. / Adam was still munching on his apples like a dweeb.

though I do // look pretty good / slung over // where a pair // of hot pink / fuzzy dice // used to hang—

No one said much / just / this makes virgins, that // makes pollution.

I had not yet labeled myself but felt the pull of men irresistible. I was drawn to a boy and examined every tether but the core one, that I wanted him to feel the same for me and I knew he didn’t. I spent the entirety of that year mourning our potential. I was prepared for Elegy Month.

Could I not want / the justice and / the sentence and / the jail of a goal?

we can all agree / no jobs for clouds / unconscious drifters

only the two rocks holding each other know / where they find balance.

The spindly stalks creep out from the nexus of the composition like arachnid extremities. The pronounced compression of space pushes the roughly hewn roots into the forefront for the beholder’s contemplation. The sharp points and scraggly edges of the root system prevent easy entrance into the scene. Oller creates a kind of coconut Noli me tangere: we may look, but not touch.

My Jewish wife and I / went into the Old City / through Damascus Gate / to eat sweet orange squares of knafeh.

Drunk Bitch dreams of a luminous stream / & pisses herself. Drunk Bitch drops her drink in the lap / of a slightly less drunk body & is sure she's found love / in his smiling shrug

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