Once my best friend tripped on acid at 2AM at UC Berkeley with her boyfriend and she saw two black blobs attack each other when in reality some guy beat another guy over the head with a baseball bat and what is that supposed to mean except fuck reality and fuck everything that has to do with […]
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there’s a flood but it’s inside me. there’s a flood but it’s made mostly of sand. there’s a flood but you wouldn’t have named it that if you’d had the choice. whatever you call it now it’s still a flood. I’m calling you honey baby my sweetest darling and I’m getting flecks of glass all […]
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sometimes i want you to feel the way i felt as a teenager smoking weed in my closet afraid of being caught but knowing that wasn’t very likely (because my parents never noticed the smell of marijuana smoke) i also want you to keep me in your back pocket where i can sleep for several […]
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keeping in mind the winter i collect down comforters for frost, asphalt for rush hour, keeping the kettle on to bring flush back to flesh where bone meets bus stop. once pedestrian, i find posture between cumulus and chimney smoke, making an even ascent, like leavened bread. when breath gives way to brinkmanship i will […]
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What makes you want to create? Many things inspire me. I am rather sensitive by nature. Breathing makes me want to create. Observing the world around me. I have a line in a poem that says “my reason for writing is that the universe is incessantly inspiring me.” It’s who I am. I’m a creator. […]
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Where are you from? How did you begin your painting practice? I’m from Northfield Minnesota, a lovely small town less than an hour south of the Twin Cities. I had the great fortune of being born into a family of artists. My parents are potters and my dad is also a high school art teacher […]
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We planted a beating heart beneath the floorboards to remind us of what it sounds like to be human. For the days when I take aim at your soul for making a mistake. For the days when you do the same. We are hypocrisies. I’ll ask forgiveness for the same sin I chastise you for. […]
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there is a bruise on my ass shaped like a gun. I cover it with my palm and find that it is hand-sized. I take a picture of it and send it to my two best friends. I text my mom and say, “it’s a metaphor.” I stare and stare. I put my hand against […]
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a lone heron watches as the wind allows the trees to touch their long lost lovers. it’s a spring-sunny day made for Harbord Street. cream clouds wispy with winter’s dying breath against a morning-coloured sky. the cool autumn air under the first-quarter moon breathed into my lungs like untouchable water, reminding my skin of the […]
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it’s just a split lip December a bull’s eye of a birth month all wide eyed and waning turning twenty-one felt nothing like shedding skin and everything like the crack of a honey comb I fell in love with a boy and choked on the full moon and tumbled all the way through the rush […]
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the chicken fries i’m eating don’t taste like 2005. they’re seasoned differently, and i don’t know how to breathe when the pupils of your iris-eyes meet the rubber of my boots and tell me “bye” and i realize that i think i love you. i keep the streets in the back pockets of my jeans […]
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maybe it’s a springtime feeling w/ the melting flowers perfume in the air, but i’ve got myself thinking I might be becoming something. I tweet and delete i’ve been thinking about marilyn monroe a lot lately and how much of a superstar she was and how it’s wild that a mortal could be a goddess. […]
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I think, deep down, everyone wants someone who looks at them the way Beyoncé sings Love on Top. I mean, there’s just something beautiful about how the key to a melody could change so many times over the course of so many minutes, so many years, so many lifetimes, and it’s still the same song, […]
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I first encountered Ollie Schminkey’s work about two months into my first serious relationship when a friend sent me the link to Schminkey’s “Two Twin Beds.” In that poem I found an articulation of so much of what I had felt completely incapable of communicating. It became a sort of first step for me towards […]
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JR Mahung’s literary creation, “Like Waters,” is both a tidal force and a gentle flow. It is teaching someone how to dance and not caring if they step on your feet, just wanting to twirl in some comfortable space with them. It is a lesson that if you keep searching for perfection, you’ll miss all […]
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Born in Canada and bred in the U.S., Allen Forrest has worked in many mediums: computer graphics, writing, theater, digital music, film, video, drawing and painting. Allen studied acting in the Columbia Pictures Talent Program in Los Angeles and digital media in art and design at Bellevue College (receiving degrees in Web Multimedia Authoring and […]
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Can you talk about the piece, “Chiquita” in particular and how this still life touches on themes of exotification and sexualization? At first glance, Chiquita, seems like a classical European style still life with fruits and a decorative floral pattern. However, considered alongside “Not exotic (not your forbidden fruit)” it begins to take on a […]
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you’re in the trunk of a car until the breath of blood throes you into a desert storm what tastes worse? the burnt out butt of a gun? or saltwater. the dust leaves you somewhere in the middle of southern california you sleepwalk through the […]
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the floors of memory are glass, which means the medicine isn’t working, which means I am back on the floor, which means it is July, which means the cherries are in bloom, which means they are painting the shrubs red, which means they look like fire, which means I’m going to try to pick them, […]
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move to miami move to new york become a buddhist really learn how to do my eye makeup start doing angel dust stop doing angel dust dangle from a rooftop like emma stone in birdman start running stop eating listen when people tell me they don’t want me to love them torture instead of being […]
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slip off my skin and look inside do you think my bones are pretty? chalk white, moon-like, they piece my body together now that my heart has stopped pumping blood i’ve gone cold beneath the freckled constellations on my chest tie my arms up behind my head until my wrists are raw and weeping next […]
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It tastes like tin the chocolate cut with metallic tinge no tin ge I’m sorry I never told you I’m sorry I told you I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything When you kissed me all the colors drained from the room I watched them pool onto the floor and there was only you left […]
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When I was a girl I ate whole oranges The taste of sweet pulp and bitter peel like eating sunlight Before me there was Abuelo Picking grapes Before me there was Pa Picking oranges He must have laughed as he saw me The fruit of his labors in my mouth Alexandra Martinez is a […]
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i would like to sink into a hot bath the same way i melt into the early darkness that pairs with winter. sometimes i escape raw weather by going to house parties with strangers and peering through their bathroom cabinets smoking and drinking and seeping into the wallpaper like a stain from a photo that […]
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the promise land is the circle k when I need coffee the promise land is my shadow in the Arizona sun when it makes me look like the person I want to be the promise land is your face when I finally figure out what to call you its couples kissing on my Instagram feed […]
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So I first read your work on Maudlin House and I’m curious: what is your relationship with the poems in that set (wonderfully titled “SOME *DRAKE VOICE* TINGS I WROTE AFTER I THOUGHT FOR A SECOND“)? i tend to write a lot about my anxiety, which, as i’m sure countless others can attest to, is […]
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So you have two chapbooks, rude girl is lonely girl! and Plastic Pajaros (both through pizza pi press) and I hear you have another one forthcoming with Button. What calls to you about chapbooks? And of course I have to ask: can you talk a little about the new collection? I like how small and concentrated […]
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Taylor Steele is a rare triple-Taurus. She’s a triple threat too—poet, screenwriter, and essayist—and it seems there’s very little that isn’t in her wheelhouse. You’ll find this is true almost instantly upon cracking Dirty. Mouth. Kiss. open. This is a collection of poems that roots for protection of the self, that’s wrought with newfound […]
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Inspired by a consuming crush, Shy Watson follows her first book (“Away Status,” previously reviewed!) with the equally stunning “My Parents Were Going to Give Me Your Name If I Was Born a Boy.” This short collection of poems, written in a single season, depict what it is like to want and not be wanted, […]
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“I’m feeling apocalyptic,” I tell them. They know this word to mean the apocalypse. The end of us all. But they don’t know what I mean when I say I feel apocalyptic. It’s a mood, a feeling, a place I go when I try to imagine tomorrow and am not sure it will come. When I try […]
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Dear David, To begin, I want to say that I forgive you. I forgive you for not calling. I harbor no resentment that the only tangible remuneration I got for sucking on your cock was a slightly salty aftertaste and waves of queasiness for the next few hours. In fact…and, I know this is going […]
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I hope I’m around when an earthquake flips a tidal wave up toward Tsunami Lanes. Or when all the TV couples we’ve shipped get divorced, and whatever remains is dissected for our viewing pleasure. If you’re not here for this tragedy we call an after-party, why come at doors? All I’m saying is how perfect, […]
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uprooted at the bar mother takes a napkin that held silverware / now holds tooth blood mixes with tomato sauce tongue the gummy space that used to hold bone smile is unbalanced mother says I can have dessert if I let her take the other out it is not time / but I let her […]
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I am exquisite in the darkness— Never Blanche DuBois. Never so derelict, but maybe the same sickness; the same hunger for those tarantula arms. I am drowsing in phosphorescence lulled from these sinuous shores by those questions of divinity: The wound in the right side and the mirroring of fevered light. Flash cut: Streetcar reconsidered […]
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to swallow you whole. others it takes the voice of a former life. a forgotten voicemail, or an old youtube video. and maybe one day feeling my absence will leave your teeth aching, or maybe it will make you feel more christmas lights than brush fire and guilt. i think one day your name will […]
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it was always Seattle it was always in the dark our bodies in search of something a drink a dance an open doorway the four of us, one me two duos you with your pale eyes, your name I saw a love inside distantly, we four walked Seattle’s Greek row, four who would never arrive, […]
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me, my softness starts somewhere in my belly, unfolding like freshly pressed grass; it arises from somewhere you cannot reach by just the touch of my skin she, keeps tepid water cupped in her hands like kindness, adjusting to the temperature of her skin the longer she holds it close she tells me: this valerian […]
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How long have you been writing for? Do you have a specific writing process? I’ve been writing for a while, but writing seriously for less than a while—I’m not sure what initially drew me to poetry. I think I was just kind of struck by this idea that nearly everything that exists is poetry. I’m […]
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How would you describe your style? It’s kind of hard to describe. I almost think I don’t have a style. I’m not very good at stylizing or idealizing during my drawing, so I end up just drawing the subject very simply and precisely. I think I referred to my style as “instruction manual drawings” before, […]
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PART ONE I watch the hand holding a gun of needles against the flesh of my arm, the points racing across my skin, depositing ink below my epidermis. The omnipresent buzzing is the sound of anticipation, all-encompassing like the noise is originating inside my skull itself. Tattoos are, fundamentally, a religious experience for me. To […]
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I close my eyes and I see grapes. I lay my hands at my sides and my fingers come together as if to pinch at invisible stems. I count the bunches as I fall asleep… It is cold morning. I plod down rows that tumble over landscapes for miles and miles and miles. I look […]
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Voices golden like my heart or wait actually my hands ready to swallow flames like hungry moths or wait actually more like a hawk, jagged insides, chemical-drift, the lisped roundness of your scoopneck soft shirt the one you wore on the roof as the moon licked your neck curled behind you like a small mammal […]
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I wish orgasm carried onto my eyelids. I wish I dreamed of rolling salt waves, pink sea, inky sky with ballpoint twinkles. Instead, left knee hooked over the side of our low mattress, I dream that I mistake watermelons for tomatoes and take the linguine off the heat too early. I crunch it at my […]
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on my morning walk I saw a man setting a small fire and I thought I could do that now that i have come home to the woods fire seems less like protest and more a friend of my dad’s now i think water might be the way to go having never lived thru war […]
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hanging out on Haiphong Street the beginning of my twenty-first year and the end of the 2016th year after death, if you believe in that sort of thing the moon has been brighter this year in an attempt to make up for all the dark the days I held a body with my body were […]
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an imagined empty room. I am surprised in a white dress, beckoning you. materialize next to me, all at once we’re in a pew, watching the organist you look at me with misty eyes. your weather implores me to stay. so I do stay. I’ll do anything to stay here with you curled up in […]
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Just before my 21st birthday, my brain is floating on less than half a glass of wine. “I’m saving the rest of the expensive stuff for myself,” my friend Mara laughs, pouring me a small taste of Barefoot before serving herself from a different bottle. I slowly nurse the rose in my fingertips. There are four of […]
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to give us this morning of shadow-cast bodies lumped under thick, stiff quilts, wooden blinds chopping winter-white sunlight up into more manageable blocks my beautiful wonder sprawled on her stomach we rinse out sticky wine glasses to later refill every flat surface covered with clay, candles and their coated holders, pencils and canvas edges, dead […]
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They come to me. Two flights up the stairs, above the kebab spot, opposite the stripped flesh the butchers. See how they run to me. A gorgeous cloud of need. I promise nothing. No refunds. Leave your guarantees at the door. Line ‘em up. I turn ‘em into water. Ever seen a man wearing hope […]
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When it is dark out, The sky closes itself like a window. I watch them Drink from the same empty stream. There will always be Smoke in the trees. We left fields and orchards untended. They withered as we slept. The birds will be dead by Spring. I will crawl Unhurt over their bodies, Only […]
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VAGABOND CITY 