March 2024
In this issue
Contents
Reflections on Loneliness from a Kitchen Sink
Connections can be found in unexpected spaces, such as greenhouses and the flora they house. Despite knowing about greenhouses and histories of violence behind their creation, I wasn’t prepared for the array of emotions that assailed me when I visited a greenhouse for the first time—inside the Jardins Botaniques in Montreal.
Stalking Annie Dillard
Afterwards, we strolled down the street. Actually, Annie and KK strolled, while I pretended to stroll, trying to inject a measure of insouciance into my knees in the hope that it would work its way upwards. “She is just a person,” I told myself, and turned to her, striving for jauntiness.
Her Own Shin Bone
“…We don’t expect you to defend your piece – and I honestly don’t think it can be defended – but we would like to hear your thoughts as to what you’ve been told…”
Column Five
Kill or be killed here in this foreign land, he fires at the first silhouette he spies through the sights of his Kalashnikov.
Ember
Radney stood there like a lump of flesh, in boxers that had parrots printed all over them. He was completely bald on top but had fashioned his monk’s fringe into a tiny ponytail.
Collateral Damage
He carried his leather briefcase as always. It was the one we bought for Father’s Day and the only one he would ever own.
Recess
You stared at the textbook on your kitchen table. Your desk was next to your bed and you had to be as far away from your bed as possible.
Say My Name
I am the Alpha and Omega, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. I am Elohim and Shàngdi, Hu and Zhŭ, Kartār and Khuda. Say my name.
Listening To Julie London (In The Dark)
This darkness is a blessing, these minor keys in your mouth a different kind of Pentecost—deep cuts cutting me loose from language.
Persistence
There—stuck in my neural net the drama has no answers for how turritopsis dohrnii can live forever, or why
Study of a Wild Horse on a Shelf
A stop in Chinatown netted me a wild horse: purple plastic, glowing radioactive in the dark twenty years later, a survivor of that trip and more.