Mystery: Toothpaste smear on lower right of t-shirt, always the same location. I mean I know how it gets there but, even to save my life, I can’t figure out how to prevent it
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I love Frisch’s Homo Faber. Bob the Builder (can’t stop), whether for need or out of boredom. Perhaps giving up on one dream or another, but never giving up on the “drawing board,” whose surface area is infinite (or so it seems). Multiplying words (can’t stop), as though inching toward some ultimate “reality” or “truth.” You’ll need the ultimate word when you get there
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After giving in to the junk mail from Classpals (I paid for 3 months) and getting Laura (real or bot) to straighten out my old account (they had me in Reading SH PA instead of Reading HS MI), I looked at all the “hellos” (from people I never knew) and uploaded some pics from our trip to St Ives
As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives …
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I took my nephew Armand to Taco Hell to celebrate something, I don’t know what.…
When I first met the elderly man, he was sitting on the supermarket floor, leaning back against the laundry detergents in the cleaning supplies aisle. Thinking he had passed out, I bent down to shake him into consciousness. But then I noticed something strange. He was snoring.
“Should I call the manager?” asked an acne-faced stock boy who appeared out of nowhere, a look of innocent inexperience in his eyes. “Or an ambulance?”
“Wait a minute. Let me see if I can wake him up.”
The man on the floor opened his right eye, and his left eye followed. A smile formed on his lips. “Sorry about that,” he apologized.
“I thought you had fainted!”
“Oh, no, I don’t faint,” he replied. “I just fall asleep.…
Don’t remember how I found out, but I may have stumbled on it trying to find a classroom in my freshman year many decades ago. And it was the only thing that kept me going.
It wasn’t in any of the orientation booklets or pamphlets about adjustment to college life meant to make you feel at home that were displayed in the counselor’s office. It wasn’t referred to in the interviews or introductory talks or added to the list that made this college so much better than others. And I never heard anyone talk about it.
But the college sleeping room was always open, at least every time I went. You entered through a normal wooden door in one of the buildings, just like any other classroom or professor’s office door.…
Major Tom Briggs liked the jungle of the Philippines. He was comfortable in his sweat-soaked uniform. The earthliness of the jungle’s petrichor and the sounds of its exotic creatures enchanted him. Briggs liked the Filipinos who tolerated his high school-level Spanish and taught him local dialects. He felt at home among them and in the jungle of the American-owned archipelago. So, when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded, the tall, blonde-haired lanky army officer and several of his men escaped into the torrid jungle rather than participate in the Bataan Death March.
They met with a small contingent of Filipino soldiers of like mind, and Major Briggs combined the forces into a guerrilla unit. Briggs had read every army manual in his local National Guard office. Believing the navy had nothing to do with him, Tom Briggs ignored the naval manual on the shelf with all the rest.…
Author’s Note: This poem is a distillation of many years’ worth of visits to the countryside of Poland as a child. As someone removed from the toil that comes from a livelihood dependent on the land, this poem splits between the back-breaking work required of children and the frivolity we allowed ourselves in brief moments.…
Twisted Roots by A.G. Parker (Reconnecting Rainbows)
A.G. Parker is a queer disabled writer/performer/editor/disability consultant based in London who’s been published in Mslexia, The F-Word, Financial Times, Human/Kind Press, Arachne Press, and Aeva Magazine. They are a Best of the Net-nominated poet, a workshop facilitator, and the co-founder of Queer Stage Revolution. Parker is also the host of A. G. Parker’s Cabinet of Curiosities podcast and an editor for Angeprangert! Spoken Word, as well as the co-host of Rebel Riot Poetry. In 2022, they were crowned Disabled and Queer Artist of the Year with their comedic-political spoken word drag act, George the Dragon.
This interview focuses on their latest book, 2023’s Twisted Root, published by Reconnecting Rainbows (which was founded in 2017 as an initiative to promote LGBTQIA+ mental well-being by encouraging participation in the arts).…
These are the very first words I say to my sister, as we walk through airport security, breathing in fresh air, after a five hour flight in a metal bird. Unlike the easygoing, small airport with overenthusiastic staff we’re used to back in Ankara, Istanbul Airport is massive, crowded and strictly professional. No random airport employee coming to help us here. They don’t even want to tell us which bus to take to get to our dormitory near some place called Hirka-i-Serif in Fatih. The one personnel we do manage to stop, glares at us, muttering, yabanci, as he walks off.
We’re not used to the cold shoulder in Turkey. Still, after much effort, and a quick stop at a cafe at the Airport to attend a work meeting, we manage to flag a cab.…
