Soda Fountain
Janelle Cordero
On my first job I worked for a woman named Jeanie who owned a soda fountain, thrift store, and tavern. I worked at the soda fountain fixing milk shakes and simple sandwiches for the few customers that
He had a Camel Blue, a glass of sweet white wine, just like last time. It’s about 20 degrees cooler than it was then. I think I am wearing the same outfit; shitty, baggy, innocuous jeans.
As a pack, my Korean-Italian-American cousins and I were little foul-mouthed figurines made of compressed carbon and steam. On their own, they knew how to stand.
On my first job I worked for a woman named Jeanie who owned a soda fountain, thrift store, and tavern. I worked at the soda fountain fixing milk shakes and simple sandwiches for the few customers that
the sun sees Icarus & tries to shift...
I never kissed another man, but I danced for one once.
We learned how to live together more slowly than we learned how to live with the swallows.
“Baby Cakes.” I don’t think she has ever called me that.
There is nothing, Lois says, gayer than spelunking.
He wondered, "What if I never get out of the shower?" and just like that he never did.
When I get home, back to this one bedroom I’ve bled, cried, and danced in, I Google what it means if you see a dead bird. I’m not superstitious, but I’ve seen at least five on my walk this evening.
Your greatest fear in life: to wind up like your mother. And yet, here you are, 34 and suddenly bisexual.
I had someone once. He spoke the Queen’s English, lived in a house built by timber hewn from his property. We were layman lovers, easily able to make cracks about the poverty of the crescent moon but
Being able to walk in a straight line is not something Yoda had ever taught himself to appreciate. The sidewalks on Coruscant, on Alderaan, even on Kashyyyk, they took the user where they wanted to go...
I know in heaven they are unlimited and free...
Where was my pimp? My boss? My daddy? I wanted a man from a Lana Del Rey song.
The term pterodactyl has fallen out of favor because it lacks specificity. Most fossil remains are discovered fractured, less than whole. At a certain point, all things begin to look the same if you take enough of their composition away.
"Tight coils come / up floating in / my husband's peppermint..."
Bill Peace 12:49
If I gotta start explaining ableism...
Jillian Weise 12:51
I know, in the fricking hospital.
Every day we both live.
I was nineteen, still felt like a kid, and Tom seemed to like me.
There were no ways around. There was reverse, but that was its own failure.
She is thinking that when you make love, your brain opens, and everyone knows what you are thinking, and you know what everyone else is thinking, so your husband knows what you are thinking and can control you.
Greg listened to hold music while rereading the suicide note.
DID NOT SEE
NOT THAT ONE!
SEE?
COMING!
DIDN'T ONE?