if i close my eyes and imagine something warmer than this 30 degree weather, something closer to my family than just being in the same city, with memories more tangible than pictures, i imagine ramen. walking back from my last class, all i can think of is a bowl of steaming noodles, eggs, and chopped […]
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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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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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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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there are the things you can touch and prove like when your tongue goes raw after eating two bags of salt and vinegar chips or when you accidentally bite into a jalapeño chunk you didn’t know was in your queso and reach for your soda but it only makes it all much, much worse there […]
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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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It’s the middle of summer now, but nothing has changed, I attend funerals like they’re parties, receive bad news like they’re just the rent I pay for living, look cancer in the face and then look away—being alive isn’t as much fun when you know what awaits you at the end, being alive isn’t as […]
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PLAYTEST 1 We’re in your truck. This college radio station will deliver exposition when there’s exposition to give, but for now we’re listening to a two-hour rotation of Alanis Morissette b-sides. We’re off-roading as fast west as the world will load, we’re so young they haven’t even rendered our shadows yet. PLAYTEST 2 No one […]
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we swing on a splintered porch bench, humming amidst the sticky humid mist of July. I try to sing a soft “you are my sunshine” but it comes out shrill. so I just shut up and pucker up for a pink plastic bendy straw. I swallow your lemonade, glowing yellow in a glass mason jar. […]
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I guess maybe recently I have become rather distant Like how I stand in front of the door and listen before making my escape And the cataclysmic pounding of my heart reverberating off the walls of its cage quickly becomes more than I can bear as though it’s reminding me of some dark secret I didn’t […]
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On the road in July, the radio still playing the same songs. I mash the buttons for change when I glance over at the empty passenger seat, the old brown blotch of spilled coffee I never cleaned off. Stray moments of you keep stirring next to me on the highway: both of us antsy to […]
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atomic comets litter the ashen landscapes of my American dreams wish I may, wish, with all my might, for uranium-plutonium rocks to stay crystallized in the stars. no longer have to look up obituaries to find little boys’ and fat man’s smoldering tomb stones: they orbit through front-paged print like steely marble boulders. when I […]
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an atlas of cloudbursts a map of eclipses solar plexus snaps so easy underneath my hand song for the boy with dirty feet song for his bare torso running wet in the riverbed a fanged devil a widow’s peak jasmine and sage in a bowl for the altar a boy […]
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Five story drop to kill a man unless the man’s a motherfucker in which case give him ten just to be sure he won’t walk away. Raised in the shadow of Houston refineries, Emily Pinkerton currently lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is an MFA candidate at San Francisco […]
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Fair faced, you stand welcoming, the sun running its tongue roughly up and down the sides of your neck, leaving marks you swear would kill you in a different life. No longer sunburned, chasing the feeling like sheets against sandpaper in between your skin. Look at the road, she says, it’s painted with the same […]
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lavender from a paris souvenir shop resting on an empty windowsill facing east yet the large remainder of the room has the faint scent of a damp towel on the door’s back. piles of worn clothes gathering wrinkles on the teal, maroon, indigo striped comforter. reminders to use the chestnut drawers beneath the bed and […]
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when i can’t sleep i think about the night crust in your eyes in the morning when you wake up with your back to me and i don’t take that as an answer. i am a force i will roll you over i will make you love me in the shy breath of morning when […]
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after Richard Siken If you wanted to tell me something, I’m begging for it right now. I’ve been waiting in the bathroom but the mirror isn’t giving me anything new. You’ve told me this house is a body and this body is a home but I don’t know if I can believe anything you say. […]
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earthbound, i look upwards & see birds on flight, fleeing the scene of the crime. in another life i had wings, too. big & beautiful & blood-soaked, i could be God’s best messenger. i am working on a theory on love. in order to be lovable, you must first be unforgettable. this is why God […]
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i tell him that this mouth bites, he thinks i’m being kinky. i’m not. these marc jacobs purple lips are not for him, or for the man telling me i look damn good, they are not for the bartender i want to fuck and they are not for the ex lover i mistook for a […]
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swallowing mini beads from my fingerprint barefoot in sand and piss the true beach life her chest collapsed bus drivers held her feet to heaven downtown the Presbyterian lord caught fire in architecture angels’ wings lifted by the smoke […]
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Olivia Gatwood has been calling bullshit and educating through poetry for years now. She is a touring poet and educator, offering workshops on Title IX compliance, community building, and creative writing. Her first collection, New American Best Friend, was released in March. The work explores girlhood and memory, class and sexuality, place-making within and […]
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I was watching the day you became a poppy field on fire. I’m love-marked, impenetrable past the rueful mouth of shallow waters. Monkish silence doesn’t fit you, (Not my blue-eyed mirror who makes me ache from missing him) its depths will you leave you heavy and wrapped in plastic. I carry my razor wire hope […]
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Drive me drunk in your heart-shaped glasses and we can forget about who we were or when about the hurt we chewed on the lives we left before we decided to be mindless because thinking Never got us anywhere kind Cross my heart to believe you’re who you never were and you try your best […]
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1. I’ve been ghosting since the first grave 2. I found this unopened instructional videotape on how to do some pretty killer karate moves If this is how we fall in love, so be it I’m ready to be kicked in the face with a beam of light 3. The gnostics had a word for […]
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For best results, choose a prediction damaging fungus existing in plain sun hair tangled no cosmic layer of irony. For best results, close off or else walk through the pain walk there in a day your blue skirt, hips busting your awkwardness not enough to keep you away. Why did you say […]
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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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VAGABOND CITY 