Green Scene
Masha Tupitsyn
In Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, the word futile appears in a section called “Waiting.” In it, Barthes writes: “I am waiting for an arrival, a return, a promised sign. This can be futile, or immensely pathetic: in Erwartung (Waiting), a woman waits for her lover, at night, in the forest.
Selections from plain sight
Steven Seidenberg
One clings to trivialities—to one’s trifling indiscretions—not to abjure the consequential, but to confront it. Nothing so deflating as the pettiness of absence—of what one had presumed would prove the majesty of the void…
Excerpt from The Meaning of Daughter
Alexia Nader
A girl from Merjan’s school got a boyfriend, which would have been the beginning of the same life as every woman in the town—girlfriend, wife, mother, lover, corpse—not of interest at all, except the couple got into the habit of playing a dangerous game in open air.
A way to wait away the news
Genevieve Kaplan
I thought to shelve, I thought to put away, to notice and to ask for
and observe. I’m most of the time usually fine
with others talking
like that, and keeping up with their pleasures or certain
People Like Me
Deven James Philbrick
Edna Steinsaltz was the kind of woman who, wrinkled face aged with wisdom and wine, always answered your questions with another less clear question.
The Torturers
Luciano Funetta
Translated by Scott Belluz
It was very late when he came home from work. His wife was sleeping; the apartment was dark. Despite the hour and the building’s noise regulations, he could still hear Frau Paffgen playing her piano.
palm springs poem
gigi bella
maybe we keep waking up in the same day/
nameless & unassuming /melatonin sleep
in drool dried pillows/o the soft jello’d hours
when we are awake/ a melted magma disco ball
Night Trip
Hwang Jungeun
Translated by Mirae Yang
Hanssi and Kossi had lost their way around the area.
Gom and Mim found them at the corner of a street. Hanssi was wearing a trapper hat and Kossi had a scarf wrapped around her neck.
The Body Dysmorphia Family Circus
Dan A. Cardoza
From near the top of the mainstay, ten feet below the bale ring, boney metacarpals slip the clinch.
It’s a failed triple somersault. Within the acoustics of the big top, the singular sound is that of a matchstick tossed in a fire, a blaze no one sees coming.
Name an Asteroid
Maggie Blake Bailey
Orbits are overrated.
The idea we should trace a path,
turn like a wheel, like a gear.
A Dancer a Builder and a Saint Walk into a Bar
Maggie Blake Bailey
Everyone knows the saint, that is how saints work.
The dancer makes space around herself,
flutters her hands open to glass and ice.
Manuel’s Keepsake
Julieta García González
Translated by Toshiya Kamei
Adriana bit her nails—most of them had jagged edges—circled around the table a few times, and sat down to wait.
Mother Charges Me Per Minute
Mialise Carney
Mother charges me per minute. I sit in her creme-colored office, my ankles tucked delicately behind one another, clammy hands clasped and bunching sweatily into the thick folds of my skirt.
Found Poem: Emails Intended for the Vice President’s Daughter
Charlotte Pence
I. RE: The Last ‘War’ of the Old Men
If you should
be interested,
I could help
your side
a little bit
Kafka Knocks at the Door
John Better Armella
Translated by Michelle Mirabella
An army of red ants crosses my path on the way from the living room to the kitchen. Marching in a perfect line, they carry an enormous, shiny cockroach.
Desert Island Desiderium
Chuck Mobley
I live on a mostly deserted island on the edge of the Sonoran Desert in Southern California. It is an actual 25-acre island surrounded by a 25-acre lake, which is surrounded by a 200-acre, 18-hole golf course.
when does a body
alyssa hanna
i heard the nazis studied the stars.
i heard they asked twin children
their favorite constellations
and they all picked gemini.
when they got bored they decided
v91: Dark Oddities Series
Joe Lugara took up painting and photography as a boy after his father discarded them as hobbies. His works depict odd forms, inexplicable phenomena and fantastic dreamscapes, taking as their basis horror and science fiction films produced from the 1930s through the late 1960s.