A JOURNAL OF ART + LITERATURE
Crush Johnny laid flat on the road as we waited for the school bus. I asked, “What’s wrong with him? He’ll get crushed.” My sister said, “Duh, he’s crazy.” Like that, I wanted him, though he was in high school and I was eight, though I hardly knew what wanting meant. Johnny had a sister,... Continue Reading →
To the houseplants during a depressive episode I used to tear open helicopter seeds. I’d bury them in the mulch and wait for growth. They came down by the thousands, tumbling from the three large maple trees. I remember the smell that came with them as they decayed. We’d rake them up. Those that were... Continue Reading →
Texting my dad about the video store closing We used to rent movies in the summer. Walking at night: the air warm, light, cooling from the day. Our street quiet: filled with the humming of the orange streetlights. I don’t remember what we talked about. We’d rent 80s comedies and buy boxes of candy that... Continue Reading →
Birth Smell Before I gave birth, every newborn I smelled was lemon fresh, unknowing seeds cracked open by promise. Glorious lemon, I said, holding a friend’s baby in my arms. Nameless sun. Crisp as wind. * During birth, I lay in the odor of my terror, body emptying itself out, unfurled gut, acid vomit, &... Continue Reading →
Road Trip with Anne Brontë Declivities, she says, and luster of August. Everything becomes scenery when one must paint. A blessed single life is declared, but the narrative is decidedly nonlinear; there is refusing and there is wanting. I think of Wildfell as a truck stop—someplace you can see from a great distance but don’t... Continue Reading →
Art in Asylum The halls are taupe and evergreen, as if someone gutted a pine tree and stretched it on tenterhooks. Every eighteen feet a poster of a landscape hangs, smothered in Plexiglas and set in a frame screwed tight to the wall. When we move to town, my wife says our house looks like... Continue Reading →
Reptilian Reptilians either evolved on Earth & left when they mastered intergalactic space travel or they’re from a planet in the Draco constellation & flew here to imprison all humans. I learned this on YouTube: fell into a video hole of people dissecting movie stills in which Reptilians give glimpses of their true form like... Continue Reading →
Maybe you hear a bell, heard it for years, clang-clang-clang. You sit on the floor, legs in a deep V, lean across to your left ankle.
She supposes plenty of hunters enjoy what they do rage-free but wonders if this isn’t worse. Maybe, she thinks, we are all predator and prey.
The Founding of Rome I’m trying to feed baby girl, and she shakes her head, slaps the spoon from my hand, raspberries away any puree I manage to force into her mouth. I give myself a time out, but it doesn’t help. “You have to eat!” I come at her again. This time she shields... Continue Reading →
NEW SOUTH 