I’m a Rhett Butler with whiskey stains on my shirt
dashing after a Jamaican princess
running room-to-room in an opulent mansion.
She intends to marry another man.
I intend to stop her.
Sancho and I chase her perfume,
always one door short of catching up.
I corner her on the third floor
under chandeliers that sparkle
bright as the costume jewelry around her neck.
“How dare you!”
Her eyes blaze royally.
I pull out my whiskey bottle to proffer as proof:
Don’t look at my stubbled chin – I’m not him.
She doesn’t believe me, so I tell her the rest:
You’re right, but feel inside me – then, you’ll see.
– Mike Wilson…
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The moon has shrunk itself
into a single bright bead
inside the porchlight—
like a thought I meant to finish,
or an apology I kept editing
until the meaning fell out.
It’s the porch of the blue house,
the one just down the road
from that whole Malibu dream
we tried to inhabit.
And I keep replaying
our first Halloween party,
remember? You in the ruby slippers,
me in that stupid “KANSAS” tee
in BRAT font, like I was auditioning
to be a state you’d speed through
on your way to someplace shinier.
We called the place “Maliboo”—
yes, the pun,
I know, I know, but back then
nothing haunted us. Not really.
Only laughter slipping
under the doorframes,
glitter welded to the baseboards,
a bowl of punch glowing
like liquid rubies
on the kitchen table.…
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Joyce’s stooped body couldn’t escape the scent of the roses lining the fence as she passed on her way to the bus stop. Her eyes were so red and irritated that when her granddaughter visited last week, Lauren wouldn’t stop mentioning it. “You should get some eyedrops,” she had said.
So, Joyce rumbled along in the front of the bus on the local route, headed to the drug store. The bus lowered, beeping its shameful beep. Finally, her cane rooted itself on the curb, and she stepped off, letting the young man—who smelled very deeply of marijuana smoke and had been waiting patiently—onto the bus.
She felt like she couldn’t avoid the smells anymore. She couldn’t walk fast enough to escape them, and something about the crook of her spine seemed to funnel the air right in.…
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“I don’t know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down.”
Max Eastman, The Enjoyment of Laughter
Just lie there.
Maybe fall asleep
or roll around a bit,
hunker down under the radar,
let gravity hold you
in its arms, let the grass or floor
or sidewalk kiss your cheek.
Standing up is overrated.
As a kid, I remember lying on my back, staring
for hours at clouds tumbling in slow motion
against blue, seeing shapes like dragons or sheep,
sailboats or sharks or bearded faces.
The body needs to rest, to slow down
and wallow in what little time it has.
I’ll enjoy the view from down here and forget
about everything in this world I won’t be able
to keep.…
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I buried my heart on the marble floor of the moon.
The blood kept seeping out from the grave,
staining the moon’s white floor.
Heartless, I stand every night, staring above,
out in the open meadows of green,
mourning the heart that keeps bleeding still,
birthing a giant stain of faded red, even after three years.
What have I done? A celestial crime.
The glowing white moon will one day turn pink,
and every soul in the universe will curse my name.
Because the heart still keeps bleeding from its broken veins,
and for eternity, it will.
It bleeds, and lets me know:
to me, it doesn’t belong.
– Syeda Mansur
Author’s Note: “The Bleeding Moon” emerged from a moment of sudden darkness during a power outage at midnight, while I was painting beside my open window.…
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In the way that so many of those pop punk band from that era lied to all of us about how terrible life in your hometown is, how we were meant for something bigger and the only thing holding us back was the people in this specific location because they just didn’t get it. If we could just leave, find anywhere else, we would find our people and finally be understood.
In the way that Kerouac and so many other Beat writers must have lied to previous generations, and those of us lost souls since who have read the classics to try to appear as mature as we felt, about how leaving is an answer, how if we just get on the road and start moving, we’ll find the places we belong, find our purpose, find success, find whatever we’ve been searching for.…
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Trailer park, third row from the left, second from the end of the row, lemon yellow with white trim. Looked like a packaged pastry. Little Debbie cakes from from middle school lunches. The icing like plaster.
A man in the doorway, sinewy, unshaven, sleeveless t-shirt, jeans with a tin of chewing tobacco in the back pocket, hunting camo baseball cap with the Waste Management logo. He was holding a tallboy of Yuengling.
He smiled like he’d been told a joke “You must be the kid.”
The boy in his school uniform shrugged. The blazer was too big for him. He’d lost weight over the past year.
“Just call me Tierney.” Said the man.
“Shane.” Replied the boy.
“C’mon in.”
Tierney sat on a secondhand couch whose cushions were running threadbare, festooned with pills like skin tags.…
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