Jamie was determined to hide his anger. Bullies turned his anger against him. They made him look helpless and dumb to everybody on the school bus. Worse: they turned his joy against him too. Like that time when word got around that he was into dinosaurs and everybody started calling him Jamiesarus. Or when everybody found out he still watched Mr. Rogers after school and all the bad things that happened after that. And if Jamie ever got mad and made a fist, or answered back to defend himself in any way, the whole bus would turn against him like they always did. They never turned on the bullies or the bad guys; everybody always turned on him and made him feel weak and crazy too since he never did anything against anybody, and mostly tried to make himself as small as possible and to stay out of everybody’s way, and to mind his own business.…
Fortunately, the alternator in my 1984 Dodge Ram is easy to access, otherwise I’d have to take it to a garage to get it replaced. I really can’t afford a car repair this month; I’ve barely worked. This weighs heavily on my mind as I roll over in bed and try to tune out the sound of my wife, who is sitting outside the bedroom window in the driveway of our Hollywood apartment smoking cigarettes and drinking cans of beer from our red and white Playmate. I hear the lid scrape open and shut each time she pulls out another can. I try to keep count, as if the roundtrips to the cooler were sheep, but I keep seeing my truck out on the street, the hood up, my head sunk in the engine bay as I struggle with the stubborn alternator bolt.…
Sara Mae is a genderqueer writer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. Their work examines the surreal, the uncanny, body horror, and intimacy. They are a 2023 Big Ears Music Festival Artist Scholar, a 2022 Tin House Summer Workshops alum, a 2022 Open Mouth Attendee, and a 2021 Sewanee Writer’s Conference Scholar. Their work appears in or is forthcoming from POETRY, The Georgia Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. They are a 2017 Individual World Poetry Slam, 2018 National Poetry Slam, and 2018 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational Competitor. Their first chapbook, Priestess of Tankinis, is out now via Game Over Books. Their second chapbook, Phantasmagossip, won the Vinyl45 chapbook competition and was released from YesYes Books in spring 2025.…
They gave us little yellow tickets and instructed us not to lose them.
Yellow like the flowers sprouting from the ground, Wrestling blades of grass, Growing up towards the sun, yellow and shiny, Yellow teeth, dentist bills,
That week was full of “almost!” moments. I almost called out but came in begrudgingly. I almost left the event early to return to my office and work in solitude or just left early for the day, stealing a roll of toilet paper on my way out. I thought about all of those “almost!” moments, staring “almost!” comatose at the asphalt outside the hospital.…
