I recognize the black balloons, the same kind used at the office party for my fiftieth birthday. Now sixty, I expected something more creative: black homburgs, melanistic leopards, caviar. I would have settled for farfalla schwarz (black bowtie pasta). Instead, I got first pick from a six-foot sub, Black Forest Ham, and a swig of … Read more
It is a leg, pale white, with golden hairs glowing in the stark lamp light. I touch her skin. I feel the goose pimples of her flesh and am intrigued by the 3 dimensionality of the cuts. I run my fingers along them like ridges on the sand. Up and over the smooth mountains of … Read more
You are sitting in couples therapy. It’s 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday and nothing is out of the ordinary. You and your husband have been seeing this therapist for almost five years and your marriage is solid. Still, you’re talking about how you wish he cared more about the upkeep of the house. As you … Read more
I. 아름아, mom calls. I’m talking to my partner on my mother’s couch, telling her the same things I’ve been saying all my life: Korean doesn’t have a ‘r’ sound, so it’s more like a ‘r d l’ all smushed together, not a roll like in Spanish. I see this woman I love … Read more
To begin with The hieroglyphical origin of My identity was simply no body But a common reed Bowing its head to the rising sun On the barren bank of the Nile Slim, tall, hollow-hearted Standing against tropical heat Until one day “I” was used As a human symbol, an open vowel Referring to the … Read more
What? The beer can on the bookcase? There’s a funny story behind that beer can. Well, maybe not that funny. Someone gave it to me when I lived in Rego Park, Queens, on the same street where Kitty Genovese was murdered. That was the first one where neighbors just listened and watched. I always meant … Read more
It is only that today is trash day. I hoped you would remember. Time to remove. We used to call it the dump. Back your truck up to the pile and fling your trash at the mountain. People went there to see the bears. Rummage. To see each other. On a Saturday morning, I found. … Read more
I pull on my heavy boots and an old sweatshirt. I haven’t walked in the woods since Thanksgiving, when the ground was still warm enough to melt the Canadian snow. It is half past Easter now – technically spring, actually winter. I crunch through islands of snow, slip on hidden ice, sink nearly a centimeter … Read more
Riding the RER Watching the graffiti scream From ghetto buildings As I enter Paris A deaf mute running A hustle Gets no sympathy from The passengers Watching blacks speak French And wondering can color link Us into kinship? Eating a baguette at gare de lyon As beggars wear their hunger On their faces Smoking gauloises … Read more
Wine or water waits. The leaf floats like a flower in wind. Sunlight becomes red with envy. The stone threatens. Air coagulates into sound. It’s as though everything living stops. There is no answer good enough. The mind is not like water or wine. Leaves are not flowers. No matter how yellow the sound, … Read more
The difference is slight. There are scratches at the door. Some animal scurries off as you turn, and it’s gone to hide just out of view, but you know it’s there waiting. Turn around too often and you get lost in the browns, the fine line between worlds becomes sharp as glass, loud as … Read more
The Winter 2011 issue features Creative Nonfiction from Micaela Seidel, Genre X from Sarah Long, and Poetry from Lek Borja, Michelle “Strawberry” Heymann, Wednesday Hobson, and Jessica Kincade
Praise be! The man at the end of the bar wore a suit and tie. Red, of course. There were no flowers but it didn’t matter. I thought of flowers and my mother who died last December but it didn’t matter. I thought of a Regime across the ocean which believed it was OK to … Read more
There is something about my echo, something of which I cannot let go. In that I hold my tongue to my lips, listening, snake-like to what is amiss. The end of echos can never be reached, grabbed, acquired, or touched. My fingertips yearn for that moment in which it can collide into remnants of sound. … Read more
Hide in plain sight: dye your hair blonde, claim to be a “Black Irish,” product of the mating between a Spanish Armada survivor and a lassie. Drink California wine without shuddering, without tasting your people’s blood. Go on wine tours to network with alcoholics who turn pork barrel politics into silk … Read more
The folding chairs perch on the rocky bank. We’ve wedged the rubbered feet into damp crags, and we hope they stay put. There are three of us here as the tide comes in, and we grip cans of warm PBR tight enough to dent them. We are lonely. We have all been dumped. The youngest … Read more
Snow. Towel for blankets. Slippery leather seats. Lord, give me strength. Dry cornflakes. Up & down & up & down & up … Read more
In the end we die. In the meantime dust collects in corners. I offer the folds of my brain as burrows for snakes and rabbits. I keep Band-Aids in back pockets for when the disasters come. Reminders not everything is fixable. I book hotel rooms and make the unfixable sleep with the already fixed. … Read more
Lania D’Agostino D’Agostino Studios, llc http://dagostinostudios.com/ You show me a new painting, part of a dream. A pink ribbon runs across the top, cutting off a giraffe’s head. The giraffe has green wheels on its feet. With its head turned, curious, it resembles the Skin Horse. Bubbles float in the opaque air, part of the watery … Read more
She chills to pac p biggie bone Because black pride is a special thing And aping one’s culture Makes her feel less guilty about her Own She is rail thin stocky pleasantly Plump Around the middle sometimes Down home pale with freckles Rarely Hollywood tan Maybe New England alabaster Just enough accents around the breasts … Read more
She was surprised when I told her I’d been to Europe “Why’d you get so excited about going there?” she said I told her I wanted to be somewhere Where I didn’t feel American She claimed she listened to Hip hop But long skirts told me She belonged to god She screwed up … Read more
I lie on my back on my sheets on my bed— the baby a regret, the pains a regret. What was full inside is now outside, on my breast. The baby slick with blood, the blood like a river, the fluid that circulates, carrying food and water and breath and bringing away waste from all … Read more
Juan Angel is jealous that I’m sleeping with a new trickster, but JA and I will be buried together. Others may join us in the only matrimonial bed legally allowed us. Rane Arroyo was a gay, Puerto Rican performance artist, playwright … Read more
could see Cera wrestling through her unstructured paisley fabric purse. She didn’t notice me; my gaze was hidden behind my sunglasses and a US Weekly. I was like a mother looking casually through my daughter’s diary, except I wasn’t her mother; I was her sister. I thought Cera appeared more like an ornamental paper bird … Read more
Maybe it’s time for a story. This time it’s a stone that does it. I pick it up. It is smooth and wet. Are there only two kinds? Jagged or smooth. Sometimes we say this side or that side, but there are infinite dimensions. To all of us. Boy or a girl, it makes no … Read more
