I saw the Plague Doctor three times before she came for me. The first time I was only a girl of two or three, mortality a vague pressure lurking over the next horizon, and so my father passed the Doctor off as a fun animal friend. The long beak, glass goggles, and large hat the accoutrements of an imposing but ultimately caring character from a book he had read as a child and swore that he had shared with me. The look of horror that my grandfather gave to my father at my grandmother’s funeral when I asked him whether he too liked the book about the Plague Doctor surely is a false memory, my adult disgust at my father’s strategy displaced onto another authority figure.…
...continue reading
The devil sat staring out of the window of his second hand bookstore and prayed that if he did get any customers that morning they wouldn’t be one of those Trump supporting MAGA hat wearing American tourists he’d been seeing jostling for position to get into St Peter’s recently. Sweet Christ, the irony of it he groaned as he lit his first joint of the day. Black Spy Books was less well known for its reputation among high and low brow bibliophiles alike, as it was an excellent place to score top quality weed. The prince of darkness himself was a tidy looking man who many claimed to be the spitting image of T.S. Eliot. Checking his WhatsApp there were no messages. Cy/Cyr/Cyr’s timestamp read currently online, but then Cy/Cyr/Cyr was always online.…
...continue reading
Many years ago, my mother took me to a museum to see dinosaurs for the first time. It was a last-minute thing. She called it a mother and son day. We’d never had one before. I was nine years old. That morning her blue eyes were puffy and red. Her face pale, drawn, preoccupied.
I was glad to get out of our house, away from my father. He was a snoring heap on the living room sofa when we left. Still wearing the same faded black t-shirt and grungy jeans as the day before. Cradling an empty Skol bottle in his tattooed forearms. He’d had one of those kinds of nights again. Only worse.
My mother and I stood before the colossal bones of Tyrannosaurus rex.…
...continue reading
I need to find a sex worker bad. It’s not for me, I promise you; it’s for a friend. My partner, Rupert. Mr. Fluffernutter, if you’re nasty, which in this case wouldn’t be a bad thing.
He’s been a little off lately, and I believe I know why. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. He just needs a little female… gaze? Perspective? Wait, I got it—audience—to get him out of his funk. We tend to perform for the rougher sex, and there’s little joy in Broville.
I’m finding that there’s a huge chasm between needing a sex worker and finding one. I miss the time when you could stroll Hollywood Boulevard and run into a Julia Roberts, Melanie Griffith, or Laura San Giacomo. Them were the good ole days when affordable, attractive prostitutes were on every corner.…
...continue reading
I stumbled on the broadcast by chance, a series of disjointed words on an army frequency nearly sixty years old. I was in the Library of Congress’ lab researching radio transmissions for my Master’s. Dusty records, military logs, and the faint smell of old paper surrounded me. I’d grown accustomed to the monotony of it all when the voice broke through the buzz and hiss: “This is Private Lars Holmgren, bravo 2 , 6 alpha . . . Charlie closing . . . need indirect . . . map grid—”
My breath caught. Private Lars Holmgren. That name was familiar—too familiar. My grandfather’s older brother. My mother’s uncle. She told me about him when I was a child. He was a dreamer, she said, the poet of the family.…
...continue reading
Many of my concerns are municipal in nature.
The cars on Savin Hill
assume weird angles. The trees bend,
one by one, to the November wind
ripping through right on time. Trees
aren’t always prepared but I’ve learned
November is a hazard. Limbs detach
from trunks and the broken cores
leak Styrofoam on the road. Floods
of teenaged Cristo Rey students
flow from the subway station and
cross the street without looking,
exactly like I do. I jacket myself
just like everyone does these days–
one puffy sleeve at a time. Buttons
separate traffic signals and walk signs.
I ignore their pebbly symbols
just like everyone else. It’s too cold.
I’m tired of standing still.
– Abbie McCabe…
...continue reading
the last beam
of evening glow
…………dancing
over blades of grass
windows rolling down
wind whooshing
through my hair
…………his hand
grasping my thigh
i tug my sweater
pretending i’m shy
then lightly
…………slap him away
we count deer
…………grazing
along the parkway
one
two
three
wondering
if they too
…………play
little games
– Rebecca Dietrich…
...continue reading