January 23, 2023 | Toilet Conversations
Toilet Conversations: Pt. 1 w/ Alexandra Dietz
Miles Marie
There is kind of a freedom in the humiliation of feeling a little bit trashy.
January 22, 2023 | fucked up modern love essays
Ex ante, Ex post
Gillan Sims
That was the world then…
That was the world then….bawdy cars and tawdry thoughts and rundown wannabe skyscrapers brownie baked by the sun that just looked cheap against the horizon and everybody
January 17, 2023 | Fiction
The Alcoholic Babysitter
Katie Frank
She breathed deeply and saw an image of the naughtiest kids in the afterschool program laughing at her.
Why I Did It
Miss Unity
The day I stopped being a woman was a hard-boiled egg kind of day.
Destroyer
Jerusha Crone
I hold myself in the plank position. The little dog sits on the rug watching. It’s a very expensive rug. She’s not supposed to be here. He’s up on the purple couch and I do not know what he is
Full Metal Jacket
Steven Arcieri
My neighbor let his Rottweiler roam without a leash again and I’m an inch away from planting razor blades inside my tomatoes.
Wine-Induced Laughing Fit
Danielle Chelosky
“you’re bad at finishing beverages that aren’t alcoholic,” you told me
Painting a Picture of a Human Being or: Thinking About Lydia Tár As If She Were Myself
Craigen Z Oster
I first saw Todd Field’s Tár in a packed theatre in Bloomfield Township, Michigan with a crowd
of mostly middle-aged and above upper to upper-middle class New Yorker-tote-bag liberal types.
During the first 20 or so minutes of the film I found myself annoyed, fidgeting in my seat and
groaning as I sat through the titular EGOT winner’s conversation with Adam Gopnick.
My Luncheon with Elizabeth
Victor Glass
When I was a younger man in my early 20s slumming about Watauga County in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina living off of sacks of potatoes, Top Ramen, and 50 cent day-old bread from Jimmy John's in the midst of a youthful exploration of self-discovery, my primary means of spiritual sustenance being $2 40 oz bottles of malt liquor, my relationships with scoundrels, endearing friends, an abundance of hedonism, a lack of responsibility, a poor boy’s decadence, bright-eyed women, and Kamel Red cigarettes, Elizabeth Ellen was the first literary publisher to accept any work that I’d submitted. This was circa 2014. Felt that she was the Hackmuth to my Great Bandini.
Moonlight Empaths
Caroll Sun Yang
I was zipped up to my nose in a sleeping bag, inhaling moist breath mingled with olfactory ghosts of campfires and wild sex past.
From a Letter, 1980
Garielle Lutz
We paid the cover charge and stood among the young homosexuals of Columbus.
simone says
Anna Dorn
writing fiction in which people google things,
suffering in a very abstract way
trying very hard to shut the fuck up & failing
An Ordinary Hour
Stephanie Yue Duhem
You must stop dating
physicists, that sere barnacling across
the cold, leeward faces of rocks.
Back to School 2
Matthew Davis
At the head of the conference table sat a man scrolling on his phone, whom Michael intuited was the leader of this secret society.
Year of the Buffalo by Aaron Burch: a Review
Elizabeth Ellen
Becca, Ernie’s wife, estranged wife most of the novel until finally she is his ex-wife at the end, based on the author’s, based on Aaron’s, ex-wife, Elizabeth Ellen, who is, oddly, metally, writing these words, typing them into a Word doc at nine in the morning
MY JUNKIE DREAMS NEVER END IN SHOOTING UP
Christian Bodney
I wake up glad to not be strung out.
I wonder how my drug dealers are doing.
Hierarchy of Fear (most fearful to least fearful*) in the Literary World
Elizabeth Ellen
-Editor at a literary journal attempting to be good, moral ppl (see: 1990s Christian Right)
Letter from the editor
Elizabeth Ellen
I never wanted to run this ship. Frankly, I’d rather spend my time writing.
Party Poems
Miss Unity
The other thing Belle did
Was burn three holes in my thigh
With her cigarette
Revenge for the chaos I’d caused
A LOW-HANGING TOWEL
Garielle Lutz
He had a little radio, and on the mornings it snowed, he listened over and over to the lists of school closings until he knew them by heart: Kellerville area, Longstead area, Mount Holly area, all the outlying place-names, all the Our Lady of’s. Sometimes there was only a two-hour delay, and he wondered what it must be like, to have the boon of two extra hours like that.
I'm Really Really Really Sorry
Sam Berman
Above the tree line, the sky has turned the color of a day-old bruise. The reception has begun to clear. Whichever uncle had parked his motorcycle in the driveway was now gone.
Alex Perez on The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, baseball, growing up Cuban-American in Miami & saying goodbye to the literary community
Elizabeth Ellen
What connects people isn’t color or creed or gender or stupid political taxonomies, but the existential despair that comes for us all. How do you respond to that despair once it comes for you? I never feel closer to a person than when they share a piece of their despair with me, and rarely, if ever, does it have anything to do with politics or ideology. It’s always about loneliness or heartbreak or loss, etc. It’s about life. The best art reflects that despair we all face back at us; it doesn’t separate us from other people.
Can’t remember the last time I had a hard-on
Kristian O'Hare
Now I bake bread to stay busy, to not think about dying.
Start Over, But With Luck This Time
Sam Berman
Our dad knew about Surface-to-Air missiles. Our mother knew what we told her.
The Beautiful Home of Emma Valdesto
Sam Berman
I’m trying to lose my ego before Coachella.
I Could Signal Dominance in Email Correspondence as Trained but the Concept Is Offensive and I’m Baby
Sarah Lyn Rogers
I, I, I, I, the angel speaks herself