polka dot thunderstorm red convertible we curb parked by the graveyard to laugh at the phallic shadows of cement why not go drink a bottle of red wine on gravel patios just to sit under string lights & feel consumed Chris Barton‘s work has appeared in Hobart, Potluck, Funhouse, Metatron, & elsewhere. He makes lattes […]
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evening played the radio soft, soft as daffodil blinking. we rocked in the solace of rosy oven lights the steps to our dance shook magnets within our bodies cold metal pushing us up against each other the vibration of our collision ran over the counter filled the bread box and our shoes. flooding without much […]
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Months of miles back on the diving end of the highway with the slow jam of July sizzling out. Lost: home. The memory lasts and lasts. Traded one black hole for another cavern: sidewalks, soda pop, polka dots, crushed nips – cracked and waning underneath the squeak and scroll of an antique strut. Phone cradles […]
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low sugar draining her cryptic stare a quiet slumber swallows her face drooping over half eaten rice and beans lips parting warmth needing air grandpa slides the window open dripping soured unease wind unveils my fate tenderly a prophecy rooted in her silence you will remember the taste of mangoes but not the sight of the […]
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I have these memories my mother & I bleary eyed in your southern kitchen, the cicadas chorus as you offer us toast waking us jet-lagged already dressed in your coffin, that bathrobe. I don’t know if it was really there then but I dress you in it every time you are alive in my head […]
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Hands sticky from whiskey I almost drink my paint water Reminding me of another shitty attempt at art On my part Art confuses me I went to the Guggenheim Museum And saw some boring Agnes Martin paintings Just lines and dull colours I left the museum feeling dumb and naive Wondering if I can make […]
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How do your surroundings influence your style and practice? I’ve been very lucky to live in some super inspiring cities over the years. Bristol, Berlin, Belfast (I only seem to live in cities beginning with B) Each city has had an amazing illustration community to connect with. Feeling part of something like that really helps […]
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The first of these is the NAIL FILE, the very one Grandmother Virginia took across the ocean with her from Puerto Rico to New York, to her aunt in the candy shop with striped windows. Virginia wouldn’t finish high school until she was in her fifties, but she knew how to raise the file two […]
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SET THE STAGE: the Drowning Children + me in a habitat of natural childhood: THE J PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, where models stand pinned in glitzy dead butterflies, wings spread, a graveyard of history. We are young, and the net age between us and the statues could cradle our grandparents in its palms. We are young, […]
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scrolling trees hit mirror light purple in the […]
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think about your body, is it in the room? enter your body, leave it in front of their eyes. introduce yourself, prepare them for loss. remind them, failure is radical. forget them, introduce yourself to loss. Leave. remember that your quivering is only a bow string. […]
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a glass of wine under starlight. well not starlight but LED feels the same. a glass of wine tastes like rubbing alcohol. i don’t tell you. i swallow. cheers. we are growing. glowing. how many years older are we. enough to pour out our insides and realize we’re in your house. house not bedroom. you […]
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when i move to the city you do not follow the subway goes by and sometimes i catch the smell of newly cut grass the only bars i go to are ones you went to in 1997 the only heartbeat that shadows mine is yours here is a broken glass here is a phone call […]
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I’m thinking about how every time I do it it never feels like anything how A1 sauce is good with fries and the nothingness of a body I’m inside now and i’m sitting and clicking And reading and forgetting A memory is everything, a pressure cooker rings two-thousand warnings and my torso is a radio […]
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when I drive I often think in fiction but this type of fiction isn’t twist-tied up with a pink bow it doesn’t smile at wild monkeys chomping on buttercups in fact it’s never seen a horse, sheep, goat, llama, or monkey voluntarily consume buttercups it’s disgruntled fiction that can tip […]
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thin light unraveled you. as the snow fell on the train tracks, i stood in close opening and gently pressed cheek to ground so i could hear your breathing and the boy moving from one full room to the other while chasing his friend up the staircase – a body that flitted like moon phases […]
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Nicole Lane: Where are you from? When did you begin illustrating? Nanna Prieler : I was born in a small, idyllic village in the mountains of southern Austria. Growing up in this traditional kind of fairytale world made me a very romantic person who has been obsessed with drawing ever since. I went away to an art […]
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things i wish i could tell my father i. stop haunting my dreams. i don’t want you there because it feels so comfortable when you’re around and i hate being comfortable around something you did. ii. why did you do that to my sisters but never me? why was i so different? iii. all my […]
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i never could taste the bitterness of decaf coffee until the barista at the cafe on the first floor of the MSU library handed me a cup with the word “ma’am” attached to it, and now every sip of every coffee i take fills my teeth with grounds that taste nothing of the robust heartiness […]
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A few missed payments and see what happens The Repo Man takes you away from that bar on Melrose where you sang with abandon. Country songs. Old jazz. Your movies were pure. You, yourself, were you. What will the stone say? Maybe, “I come from a broken home and I realize it’s the rule rather than […]
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I tag every piece of you I can see and not see when I run out of ink, I prick out my own warm blood. you grin and I dabble myself all over your boxed life, stain your breath and call it my breath, smudge your memories and name them my memories. I say isn’t it so wonderful to be […]
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because i can spread my fingers to reach her southern skies stop reaching, i think bloom sweet in the space of my ribs like spicy flowers in the night amidst a summer’s mist hold me tight no, tighter like the black breeze wetting our windows make fire lick my cheek in exchange for little sweet tastes […]
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Emptiness encased in skies that flutter like fleeting fissures of light through crystal, piercing into me I told myself that cities are built of bricks and stone and concrete poured into holes in the earth, ugly forms of symmetry painted over and over and over and over again until our eyes can glimpse at its […]
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Can you talk about your background? How did you first get into illustration? I got into illustration as a kid, despite the fact that I went to an art school that was quite traditional and somehow uptight, I became interested thanks to the school library. I didn’t felt so interested in reproducing the great masters. […]
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My Own Private Idaho: Tuesday night at the New Beverly Cinema. Five-dollar double feature, don’t remember the second one. Gummy seats, sticky floor and nobody there but us (and the) creeps. You, in love with the girl who stood you up: The thrift shop dress and vintage nickname. Me, last minute sub, extra ticket— Footwork […]
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The West Oakland train stop; defunct and tagged standing sentry between a collapsed overpass and a neighborhood gone to shit. You hopped the chain-link easily and breezed across the hill and dale of broken concrete, the stubborn flora crowding up and in between; moving earth like tiny fault lines, smashing plates together, splicing ground to […]
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Whip egg whites, expectations, preheat an oven, carefully cultivate delicate friendships with belligerent drunks. Add laughter by the teaspoons, desperation by cups, and apathy in gallons. Freeze and thaw. Partially defrost. Chill for hours. Pour in buckets of sugar, cinnamon, precious time and effort. Fuck it up; do it over. Scrape off what sticks to […]
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Collapsed into you outside of baggage claim in Pittsburgh. We sandwiched at Primanti Bros. where you picked at the bread, said you were already home sick, jet lagged, but a promise was a promise and Pennsylvania had taken its toll on me; the ice kept on short circuiting the hot wires of my soul. You […]
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but i too wish to be the catcher in the rye when i grow up. and by that i mean i want to protect everyone that is not me want to place everyone else in a bubble away from brokenness. by this i mean that the world is broken and so am i, and i […]
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stretch the hours before giving in ignore the pounding / lump in my throat cross my eyes pretend it never happened suck it all up this is how i want to look i hold the sinking flesh with cusped hands see myself spread thin count how much it takes to burn an entire body / […]
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I miss the honey pooled under your neck. since when have I been spilling blood to get away from you. I talked to the trees until they screamed. that’s summer. we are born from dirt, with hidden wings. I am trying my best to drink the light. to dip under the sun’s blade and emerge […]
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All of my friends from California call on the same day and everyone I know has a reason to go back to Boston. A week ago I was next to you; there is no luxury in this retrospect. Today, I take two trains an hour to Brooklyn to hear people read in soft voices under […]
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I love temperate climates and love like them Never choosing indefinitely rain or snow or sun My interests include sex and politics Anything that is about desire and continually in need Since birth I have demanded attention I have never once owned grease I sit at the intersection of controversy and insatiability I do not […]
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laying in bed, contemplating gun ownership in a city in California, a reality that I hadn’t quite surmised he had scaled my balcony once before, asking me to open the door so that we could talk the appeal had left me open to talking, so I made my way downstairs, and unlocked the locks all […]
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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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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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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 