The Free Brutalists by Rav Grewal-Kök
Waverly read the drafts of Borg-Olivier’s chapters as soon as he finished them. Often she wept. One late-winter night in Borg-Olivier’s apartment, as snow fell gently outside onto the silent street, she told him it was as if he were writing the novel for her alone... Read More
Cognoscenti In a Room Hung with Pictures by Benjamin K. Rice
The cruelty of an image is that it excites us toward an anticipation that it can’t fulfill. It gives by taking away. Though, when Cotán gives me an image of fruit, he does not take away from me any particular instance of pear or pomegranate—instead, he takes away the whole idea of fruit... Read More
Excerpt from Coil by Lou Pam Dick
If to start one step ahead, wrong step, the nix is a beginning. I wore my stairs around my neck, therefore I choke. Please be legible. What time is it? The door keeps opening. My protector gets all wet. I shout, I am my bodyguard! I whisper it inside me. Bare the neck of the... Read More
A Frenzy to the End by Erin Fleming
I walked down the street as it spiraled, ever tighter, ever darker, never reaching its center, until I was in complete black and traced my hand on the wall that lined my path. I felt that I was walking into the center of an enormous shell. Experience—biting; earth—taught me that something waited at the center... Read More
Excerpts from My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire, trans. from French by Rainer J. Hanshe
Love can be derived from a generous feeling: the taste for prostitution; but it is soon corrupted by the taste for property. Love wants to abandon itself, to confound itself with its victim, as the conqueror with the vanquished, & yet preserve the privileges of the conqueror...
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The Cave Solution by Janalyn Guo
I was told I would fight back at the greenhouse; I would struggle with letting go. At night, I can’t sleep, and even the mantras don’t help. My body burns, the same way it feels when I forget something important and it’s too late to go back. I am full of regrets... Read More
Porn by Fortunato Salazar
But now, in retrospect, ten looked like an infant garment. By noon, at this rate, I would close the last page on the book. I slowed myself down. The afternoon loomed with its frantic taxidermy errands... Read More
Three Cartoons by Kit Schluter
Walking along the Avenue of the Suicides, the cockroach takes the ant by the arm. “We’ve been spending too much time together,” she says. Leaves fall over them like circus tents. Intimacy, suddenly. “I know we have,” she says. “But it’s my birthday on Sunday, and I wanted to invite you... Read More
Lessons by Sean Kilpatrick
You’re born, someone sticks an unfolded paperclip into the meat of your eye, / you adjust to your condition, your conditions adjust you, you die horribly. / Like stubbing a cigarette out on your cheek when what you need is to be bathed in napalm... Read More
Excerpts from In This Room by Roberta Allen
Lea is his age now, the age he was when he took his own life on this day fifty years ago. As she sits at the white table, drinking coffee, she sees his death in the half-filled cup. His death lives in this room. His death lives in this silence... Read More