It’s 14º, dry at the Jackson St. station, and I’m waiting for the Blue Line to Bucktown. Some late-40s bro strokes his acoustic, his graveled falsetto slides through his “Man in the Mirror” encore. Cruising the silent tracks of the L, I can guess where their lingering caress might take me. I’m studying a pint … Read more
At night, if you’re quiet, you can hear the campfires gossiping. They laugh like javelinas at our episodic sleep. Whooping cranes and blue herons, in February, litter Sundown Bay. Save the wintering waders, the coastline is anemic. It’s like living in a place where there are too many dogs— this jammed choir of Camaros on … Read more
Once a year I pick up my dead dad from the cemetery. The cars with tinted windows move slowly looking for their dead loved ones. I am nervous to see my dad. I miss him. I even coughed excessively over the phone for my boss to give me time off. I also paid two ladies … Read more
I am coming to you now. When Dorothy was alive, I did not think of you as much more than the scenery framing our friendship. She noticed when you were low or high or altered. Do you save anything? Do you keep some of the world in your watery heart? … Read more
Here is a small prairie on 5th Avenue. Grass and wildflowers hold off concrete and buses with their dried clothes. I do not know the name of this feeling: Is it longing or ecstasy? I want to say to Dorothy, Here’s something we missed. She once said I am going to miss me. A … Read more
After Mark Rothko (see images here) We are driving on a white road. We know it cannot go on forever and yet that is what it is doing, brightening and widening, widening till there is no more road, just land and sky, sky and lightly penciled stars, hills and bones and Dairy Queens. We must … Read more
I’m counting the remaining seconds of my life on one hand–in the five steps along the concrete railing of the bridge crossing the river. People scream their car horns at me and some jerks in a Hummer order me to jump. The sun sets behind the haunted hotel overlooking the water, built beside a haunted … Read more
They never understood you either. Demure, elegant, reserved—their power always seemed to emanate from a far field you never ventured out to. Early, before they ended it abruptly, you would show up suddenly with a six pack of Coors and a bucket of chicken, knocking at their undented door. You laughed, belching, and said see … Read more
Patrick accidentally injected over an ounce of engine grease into the middle finger of his right hand They should have amputated it, said his wife It cost us $16,000 to fix and it’s still not right I sat on the couch stroking a mangy cat I didn’t notice it was mangy but after we left … Read more
It was hard to remember completely the first time I met Ana. I only have two specific memories from that night. The first one, firmest of the evening, was my blurred reflection in that too-small, too-dark bathroom. I sweltered under my raincoat but couldn’t take it off; I wasn’t dressed for the place. I swiped … Read more
Make sure to rope yourself to such posts as the smells of jasmine and rain in the evening, or the sound of blackbirds plucking worms before the dark swells over. Ease into the rush. Lift one limb at a time. Practice opening one eye, then two – one nostril, then both. Wiggle your toes, loose … Read more
There’s this one spot in the front yard where the edge of the grass juts out into the driveway, so when you’re backing out you have to swerve to the right. I don’t know why it’s there; I guess the landscape designer thought it might serve some sort of aesthetic purpose to make our yard … 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
After Mark Rothko (see images here) The present we know, with its ascending stairs that are somewhere else descending, happened as we wandered, as the field widened and took us in. We saw what we were as we held it close and it doubled and gave. As the Plumeria opened, we savored, sometimes painfully, as … Read more
You get drunk at the party and tell everybody about the time you were raped. Half of it’s bullshit. Alcohol is doing that to you these days, though. Last week you were at the bar and started lying about doing time in Chino. And the long-haired dude who looked more like a rocker than a … Read more
Misfortune had smiled upon Nikki and left a thousand injuries. By the mid-90s she’d resigned herself to the dismal future that lay before her: living alone in a one bedroom apartment that smelled of cat urine—a remnant from the previous tenant—selling women’s shoes for a living, driving a car Ralph Nader condemned as a death … Read more
We were silent on the plane. I told myself this was because of the confined space, that nobody talks on airplanes because other people would listen to our conversation. They would hear the two of us playing happiness and roll their eyes. It’s better we don’t talk. I looked at her in the seat next … Read more
Amusement Park I work for Kabul’s amusement park. At first, I met with merchants who gave food when I gave in. And you might say we bartered in the black bazaar of Kabul. What must I do when my small girls go to the school in socks, in dirt, no bread? To sell my meat … Read more
Retelling the story, I’m too embarrassed to name the bunny hill where I lay splayed like a rag doll, a trail of gear marking the tumble of my undoing. Endless equations of people dangled on the lift above, suspended and swaying, their skis forming X’s V’s and 11’s over my face. My third day on … Read more
Bring the moon closer, darling, I like to press my face to you, your sky, and on my toes, stretched to the limits of the veins in my neck, I feel nothing but the cooling air picking apart my hair, searching for something sweet. There was a great temptation to lick the dark … Read more
I ran a very long way for a very long time & as I slowed to arbitrarily finish, I was handed a medal for the goal of which I knew was sacrifice, but what was being called achievement. I ran a very long way for a very long time & I as I did … Read more
Drop that napkin, let’s let the melting cheese be a call to arms, the tomato bread bowls brimming with promise of more bread under- neath the soup, and your arms Emily, tender with speed as you desperately try not to spill your favorite meal on the baby’s developing bald spot. I will ignore the older … Read more
The first thing I feel is the hair on my stomach dancing under my moving fingertips leading downward to the raised mound of my crotch. Half-sleeping half-waking I could be dreaming. I could pretend this vegetable tube the dimpled sack of balls are foreign to the land between my thighs. I could wish for the … Read more
if someone comes to you with the truth run brush with baking soda drink vodka straight kick low punch high floss floss floss find a job you don’t hate to deter a bully saw stickball bat in half hide in bushes flash attack mercilessly don’t worry pray same shit go to prom escort homeliest girl … Read more
like this: we walked downstream with water like cold breath in our boots and the salmon around us throwing, fighting up to drop their nets of marbles, clementine, go dead and wash down, all flesh, and we meet this way so often— forgetting physics and improbabilities, prayers for … Read more
