The American stillborn sense of justice has worn its grave so truthfully all things pious count no more and didn’t then. We want poignant documentaries, exposes of humanitarian needlework to rally

burrow

you traced along the freckles on my back
with black ink,
like a crumpled constellation

i looked at the picture and smiled,
like a lonesome girl reading her diary aloud to an

As I write this, on a Friday afternoon in early August, the Phillies are losing 7-2 in Washington, and Scott Hairston is walking up to the plate to pinch-hit for the Nationals. My phone is

you can call me the Boom Doctor

I have your emptied-out torso on the operating table

It is not easy to remove a heart with a spoon from the chest of a man, nor is it clean. The spoon was purchased 48 hours earlier from the Bed, Bath & Beyond on 9th Street. The Nicole Miller Moments 5 pc Flatware Set was $24.99. The salad fork, dinner knife, dinner fork, and soup spoon were disposed of. Only the teaspoon remained.

“Go back to sleep,” I hissed at Perry. It was 2:00 in the morning and we were in our newly purchased condo in Mammoth, sleeping in twin beds in the only room that was habitable. The other two

Tops Like Arrows

Dan’s Trans Am smashed into the guardrail,
him doing 75, all hopped up
on Dexatrim and Coors Lite.
I remember him, my younger brother,
 grabbing his fleshy waist when

I’m wet and wearing white pants
I’m wet and wearing
White pants.
I’m wet and
Wearing white
Pants. I’m wet

Pants.  I’m wet
I’m wet and wearing white pants.
Wearing white
I’m wet

I dreamt about walking around Ikea by myself and buying a lime green ice cube tray. I drive to the post office and pick out a large flat rate shipping box. I put the ice cube tray inside and I

At first, you think it’s going to be that old cliché:  men and their brown liquors sitting in leather chairs in front of fireplaces, fiddling with models of ships and speaking their “big important

The first time my neighbor's place burned to the ground, I wasn't his neighbor, but he told me about it.  

Tritina: Die

Our lives, the lyrics of ‘Die! Die! Die!’
Less the scenes in Die Hard or Die! Die!
My Darling! or Juliet Montague’s “when he shall die,”

The way we feel when the

"For three years I lived on a 28' 1975 Carver Mariner."

My Spanish was always too slow to impress my father. I tried not to learn it to spite him. But  that was like not swallowing water in your mouth when there’s no place to spit it out. 

Desireé Panda and the Lee Van Cleefs

A murder dinner for beckoning.  Let’s have a grave way with phonics.  Let’s tangle bright inside one another.  Holding forks, holding knives.

Come out

I’ve gotten in the habit of writing these long email invitations and party reminders for parties I host at my place. Here’s from my 2nd Annual Holiday Festival party. I’ve got a Cherry Tomato

Megan Martin is the author of Sparrow & Other Eulogies (Gold Wake 2011). Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Caketrain, >kill author, The Collagist, and la petite zine.  She lives and teaches in Cincinnati.

As a writer, what draws me to wrestlers, superheroes, etc is probably what you pointed out, that when we first encounter them, they are overtly flat characters, cardboard. So I have a chance, even an obligation, to dig in and root around and find the human, expose him or her. Once we see someone else not as a caricature but a person, we can reflect off them, compare ourselves to them, feel empathy or disdain or any of the myriad of human reactions that matter. But we can’t just shrug and go, “Ah, janitor.”

Good evening. I just ate eggs. Breakfast for dinner, is what Robin called it. Is there such a thing as dinner for breakfast? I’m sure some jabony has fired-up a cheeseburger and fries at 8 a.m.,

Let’s follow Holger home, they said, and burn his house down.

We were under the bridge. We were trolls; we were engineers. We were MacGyvering a raft for the rat we’d rescued last night. Clumps

After a couple of Martinis, // one may regard oneself pleasantly pixelated. / I cure nerves with a ten-hour Netflix binge, // then curve my vertebrae to you / while our phones update.

The value of a cash gift is on its face, and that, in some circles, is the value of the giver.  But excuse me, the value of a $130 vegetable peeler is $5.99.

Have you traveled abroad?  I’m sure

comic by Oliver Bendorf

Washer and dryer as hapless duo, / each crashing and beating the other // to shit, idiot tandem: all this / while standing in place.

Carnie lives among piles of porcelain and Tupperware in a storage locker near Conneaut. She lost her job at the prison and then her house was foreclosed upon. Most of the practical things she owned

EVERY DAY IS SUNDAY

I go to call her for the ribs recipe but then I think how she doesn't respond to my jokes so I go to text her instead. And what I say goes like this: you used to make