on page 97, between sections that detail time Paul and Erin spend in Ohio with “Calvin” and “Maggie” (Jordan Castro and Mallory Whitten), I wrote: Manson Family, in large black letters.

Jerry’s Daddy, looking half dead, sat in the kitchen smoking a Camel and sketching comic faces on a napkin with a stubby pencil. There was quite an odor about him, mostly of sour, poorly washed

Look at me falling in love with fallible bodies.
Look at me performing emotional labor...

Jesse come in from the spot across the way where Daddy had him throw the last of the matchboxes. Daddy let Jesse carry em cause they was light, and Jesse liked helpin. Jesse counted 38 full trash

A Preamble to an Explanation of You

It was like I worked in a Popsicle factory
but had never tasted the color red.
I walked the dry tongue of the road
as crickets scritched

When we arrived at our new place on Plankton, the first thing I noticed was all the cages in the neighbor’s yard. Rows and rows of wooden crates, stacked on end, lined their yard, the wire netting

FLYING SAUCER ATTACK: “Beach Red Lullaby” (b/w “Second Hour,” 7. single, Planet, 1995) 

Driving westbound on the Massachusetts Turnpike’s thirty-mile Berkshire run between Exits 3 and 2,

Sticky Fingers

Mick Jagger I want you to pry the top off this maple syrup for me while I flip the pancakes—I didn’t wipe it down before I closed it last & now I fear it’s sealed

poem in the morning

this farmer's tan is not going to go away
all by itself
but what can i do about it?
go to the beach?
take my shirt off at work?
that would not be very

Greg had always suspected that had Hitler managed to get into art school, he would have become the Thomas Kinkade of his time. Did it follow then that had Thomas Kinkade not found commercial

After a Late Night Outcall (Creepy Enough to Care)

my feet are so warm
I shouldn't have worn
my felt boots
I didn't mean to be drunk
I'm a dull woman
these days
it's just
I

“They paved paradise / and put up a parking lot / which was a public
  necessity / that boosted the economy / of the city and surrounding towns.”

- - -

Fact: Jim Bogios used to

 to the right of my heart a button °
if you see the button press deeply into me

I am shining brilliantly on my way down the stairs

in 1984 I thought everything existed as light

in

Matthew Savoca has placed himself as a poignant voice in the school of transcendental deadpan writing. Penning poetry, and now prose, which prominently feature nature and domesticity as

again andy is crying.
all the days he is crying.

This was a burlesque theater, a two-bit operation that could barely pay off the racketeers and the cops  a place to come into out of the dark, although in the end the dark could snag you by the

An Interview #1

Vibe Magazine: Why haven’t you shot yourself in the head?

Aaliyah: My mother sits in her padded recliner, stares through a row of Law & Order DVDs and thinks, "I

When the governor’s budget cuts hit Eisenhower Middle School, the library’s one of the first targets because who needs books? The staff is halved. I’m cut; Joan’s kept. She has nineteen years in

if I were an Amish girl,
I would leave
for Rumspringa...

For this Non-Reader spotlight, we talk to Kathryn Wakeman about not reading, tv, East of Eden, Eat Pray Love, reading the internet, deadlines, feminism, unlikeable female characters, uncontrollable agreeability. 

Glissade, pas de bourrée. I stole a bottle of Cointreau from mother’s liquor cabinet

In the dream you are not a lamb on fire.

The next morning the phone rings early, five-thirty, definitely not later than six. The birds outside don’t scream that loud after six. The voice on the phone is my niece, the fifteen-year-old,

Suddenly I want to be the one to leave a party.
Maybe life imitates art after all.

There’s been a lot of talk about Executives in the news lately, a lot of mystery and confusion. For the last year, I’ve had a side-gig proofreading executive resumes. Now I know all about

Today
I was at McDonald’s
and there was this chunky,
high school-aged kid...

LAKE ELSINORE WILL HOST THE ONE TRICK PONY

This place was one of those places. Had a minor league baseball team, an Angels affiliate, on some high ground, halfway between Riverside and

I know the scars of my grandfather do you. I know the guns in my pelvis do you...

I'll never forget the sight of those Rockies...

As I write this, nearly a month into the season, my beloved Phillies flounder in third place. Even that dubious standing owes much to their good fortune over the weekend, which saw Detroit sweep