Maybe I can calculate my way out of it? Terminal velocity, 54 m/s, @ 37,000 feet, which gives me about two and half minutes (not exactly, but considering, that’ll do). To do what? Think of a way out? Go over every detail and see if I could’ve done it better? Reassess my life via Nairobi, South B Hospital, seven and a half pounds, small bassinet in the corner of a mud-brick home, loving mother and father, primary school, high school, and Mrs Otieno telling Mama the boy’s some sort of mathematical genius. Straight to my Continue reading “First Thought by Stephen Orr”
I
She said her name was Billie. Her mama called her Billie-Jean when she called her anything at all. At fourteen she was all angles and knees and steel-blue eyes. We sat in the doorway of my 1970’s shit-brown RV, the orange shag rug faded to something between mustard and burnt sienna. Dirt had settled so deeply into it that it was hard to tell the difference between the ground and floor. Continue reading “The Tao of “Howl” by KB Baltz”
TECH NOTES:
Room 2 – 6.17.2015
EMR #1421 – DOB 12.25.1981
JASMINE “JAZZ” ABRAHAM
PATIENT at lab tonight for a nocturnal polysomnographic assessment (NPSG) following complaints of excessive daytime sleepiness. Ordering physician will review data before ordering nap tests to rule out sleep disordered breathing as primary diagnosis.
PATIENT arrives noticeably sleepy. During 10/20 procedure, conversation lulls are induced by frequent microsleeps, but PATIENT is easily aroused.
Continue reading “Please Note: This Sleep Clinic is Fragrance Free by Tamara Sellman”
The transparent eyelids of Los Angeles. The whole show of human sense … celestial mechanics suddenly unemployed … language makers with superior intellect … everyday sexual occurrences inside the supermarket … secret visions stymied by the cerebral systems … an endless sky … dead arms flay about in a great storm … the feint flash of a sticky … heavy rain. My ghastly face … these hots days … these telegraph wires … this Continue reading “CERTAIN MOTELS / MOTEL SOFA by Shane Jesse Christmass”
I begin with a drone.
*
I begin with the reflection of my face as I sing to the framed photo of a volcano erupting.
I begin with my mother—how, this summer, as we drove through the humidity and jasmine and river-smell (not quite fish, not quite algae, not quite salt) she told me I had a twin who died in the womb.
I decide she’s a sister.
Ghost sister. I begin with a drone and narrate from the voice of the ghost sister,
…………..ghost double. Continue reading “Auto- by AM Ringwalt”
Tone wakes in the middle of the night. A breath breathing on his neck. At first he assumes it’s Flint’s fitful breath. He must’ve joined Tone in bed, stretched across the arc of his back, his snout behind his head, his nose close to his ear. A grumblevoice. A shifting of weight.
I’ve been ignoring all calls since you began ignoring mine.
But “Voices” sang to me in the cacophony of critics that spend their day, my day, in my mind commenting on every thought or action I associate with my I. You, I associate with my id. (“’What id like to do to you’ would have been a better line,” one says, as another says “You’d never pull it off” and still another, “They’d assume ‘id’ is a typo.”) Perhaps the emergence of your smile draws out my words, but that information whispers too softly for me to hear over the cacophony. Continue reading “Autoi-biography by Dov Nelkin”
Graceland, Graceland, I’m going to Graceland. So, this is how it ends? All my life I lived for time and money, tied to the world of things. Ellie said, you have to get a smartphone, grandpa. Too bad, I left my phone at home. Oh, I want to believe we all will be received. At least, I’m not alone.
“Loneliness?” mused the fellow who sat reclined against the wall of Kii-no-kuni-ya holding the letter sent poste restante. “We cannot be.” He listened to his thoughts as they spoke of their voyages and woes, frivolities and schemes. The fellow stood. “Hour’s come.” They went on the road merrily speaking the thoughts they had at the hour the Sun would rise. Continue reading “Graceland by Voima Oy and Sean Fraser”
If I’m being honest, I always wanted to be a writer. The phone sex came second. The modeling came third and the mediumship? Totally unplanned. I run from that, just like my mum some would say along my journey. It’s the the things you run from, you end up needing the most. Continue reading “That Phone Call by Lacie Grayson”
Chants of innocuous dreams. Juxtaposed worlds full of images. Nowhere to store these moments but vestigial ingrown pockets. Resultant miniscule sacs swollen with residual blood. Echoes of a thousand Nippon years rasping in my ears. I awake in Queen Himiko’s tomb. Continue reading “Sapless Fortunes by Dale Brett”
Human as alien as animal as transformative substance. My gills again. My lungs left behind. The anti-intro that discusses mutations and mutations only. New genes discovered in the side streets of North Inglewood. My personal mental fitness … a direct agency to despair. Psychedelic mathematics … the double helix … organisms occur as new species … desirous selection. Cockroach shells beneath my upper lip. A thousand times a day I vomit in the open hallways. No one sees this sign … let alone someone asking my name. I am not human. Live nude guys on Instagram … the micro-evolution of asexuality … the sticky goo of human bones … a total deterioration of feeling. Continue reading “Simpering by Shane Jesse Christmass”
“So you still think you can do it?
So tell me, what did he eat today?
And how much does he weigh?
And how long will he remain a minor?
And you actually believe him?
Stop the talk about his future. We’re talking life or death here. I’ll give you a day to think about it. But that’s it. I can’t give you anymore time than that.
It hardly matters. In New Mexico kids are given most of their rights at fourteen.
Continue reading ““… please let him hate you too … ” by Bobbi Lurie”
“Memories resurfacing” … “coagulating underneath the meniscus” … “slowly lifting over the crest” … “kino eye gazes down upon my apartment” … “witnesses our inadequate sex” … “the timid approach and delicate placement of your hands” … “there is no good fuck” … “the fragments will have to be assembled later” … “Blondboy” … “Deadboy” … “Oldboy” … “Tommyboy” … “another silhouette waiting over the horizon” … “sunset is green or burgundy” … “they’ve stopped firing rockets in the middle of the night” … “I delay my need for glasses” … “the eye doctor tells me that I can only see the past” … “not what is happening in front of me” … “medical time is organized into a linear model” … “it becomes difficult to project myself” … “smut-maker gives his body to people he does not know” … “he collects these encounters” … “builds an altar from cum and diorite” … “attempts to summon a new boy” … “no more boys” … “stone turns luminous and then returns to normal” Continue reading “Post-Erotic Ritual Text by Mike Corrao”
In memory of Sam Shepard (1943-2017)
1. Under a fat summer moon the Lost Cowboy stops his horse. Stares at the scars in his hands looking for a map to guide him home.
2. Home is the place where you always long to be but which you will never find. The Lost Cowboy still hears the words of his father.
3. Come home, oh sweet baby, come home back to me. Startled, the Lost Cowboy struggles to place his mother’s lullaby in his memory. Continue reading “The Lost Cowboy [A story in 24 tweets] by Mauricio Montiel Figueiras”
how did we get here
Content Warning – Childhood Sexual Abuse
Continue reading “how did we get here -A Flash Fiction by Stephanie C. Odili”
From where the birch takes the sun
Peter Maier waits in his back yard. He paces the patchy lawn, from where the birch takes the sun; from where he sits in summer to read. Or in the crook of the linden, further back, behind the vegetables. He follows the brick path, and remembers every time he’s helped his father turn the soil, plant the carrots, the potatoes. Just like this, wandering, unsure where to stand, where to go, what to think about what his mother calls the ending. He can hear the artillery a few kilometres away. They’ve been warned – later today, or tomorrow.
Continue reading “From where the birch takes the sun — A short story by Stephen Orr”
Rare Treats
When my grandfather asked me to buy cigarettes at a local convenience store in front of our house one Saturday afternoon, I remembered what Teacher Gladys taught us in school that week.
She said cigarette smoking is bad – for the health and for the environment. I was eight when I couldn’t weigh which was worse. I didn’t want anything bad happening to my family, most especially to my grandparents.
Continue reading “Rare Treats, a Flash Fiction by Angelo Lorenzo”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 