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The four fingers of both my hands crimp the edge of the narrow writing table between me and the prisoner. We tuck our knees in close to avoid touching each other. It’s been five minutes, and already my sweaty legs are cramping up. I ask Rico to tell me about his mother. He snorts, then clops his chair around sideways, angling himself askew. Everything is clouded in the dirty light of the jail’s attorney conference room. The sheen playing off the shaven scalp on Rico’s profile—one of the shooters had a big, bald head, according to police reports—seems
» Continue reading Escape by Jesse Cheng…
Listen to a reading of “The Negative Zone” by Matthew D. Perez.
Sarah and I are far from love, but we’re sneaking up on sex, which is fine by me. As we pause before the door of room 316, Sarah is fishing through her handbag for the key card. She glances over. “Let me see that shirt,” she says. I turn, tent out the front of my t-shirt in the light. It’s a donor gift from an independent radio station: black, dominated by the ghostly graphic of a Man-O-War jellyfish dangling a long knot of tentacles below the assassin’s
» Continue reading The Negative Zone by Matthew D. Perez…
22 December 77 San Francisco
They’re flying me to Guam! Where’s Guam? Typhoid shot left arm. Tomorrow Marine Transport Lines will put me on a 9 p.m. Pan Am flight to the Pacific where I will board a tanker that will hop around the Far East.
25 December 77 Port of Guam
The other two seamen and I have been treated okay. Upon arriving, a driver met us at the airport and took us to this hotel, private rooms, bath, radio playing Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, a view of sea cliffs, coconut trees, and
» Continue reading Sealift Pacific Journal by Cliff Fyman…
Listen to a reading of “Stockwell Road Shots” by Tony Rickaby.
In 1966 the Italian director Michaelangelo Antonioni made the film Blow-Up, about a photographer’s accidental involvement with a gun murder. In one scene David Hemmings is driving his open-top Rolls Royce along a street in which all the buildings are painted red. This is the Stockwell Road, and the buildings were the premises of the motorcycle dealers Pride & Clarke.
The Brixton Academy used to be The Astoria cinema. I once saw an Andy Warhol film there – Lonesome Cowboys. I remember thinking how funny it was and wondering
» Continue reading Stockwell Road Shots by Tony Rickaby…
Listen to a reading of “Addictions and Adverbs” by Harmony Neal.
The man is a white horse, a tiger, a dragon. I want him the same way I want that cigarette I’m not supposed to smoke. If he was around, I’d sneak out to the porch and light him on fire.
He invades me nightly. Then he’s on the outskirts of my brain all day, spying, following me to fold laundry and wash dishes, trickling through my earbuds while I walk for miles in the same place at the gym, his essence infiltrating Kristin Hersh’s vitriol, every song about
» Continue reading Addictions and Adverbs by Harmony Neal…
I wondered what might happen if some cool writers looked back into their baseball-playing histories and created prose poem documentary baseball ‘cards.’ Below are the first five cards of a longer project I’m working on with some friends.
Wax Statues #1
BRIAN OLIU RIGHTFIELD⎟ READINGTON JUNIOR BASEBALL
The hat, a light blue one year, a maroon the next, a yellow the last, remains on. The bill of the cap was bent in an arc: God knows that no child keeps things flat—it lets the sun sit above your eyes and earns a punch to the arm. The hat, light blue,
» Continue reading Wax Statues Set 1 by Robert Stapleton…
The bus is destined further south, but it stops on the shoulder of the highway for us to step off. The other passengers watch as we file down the aisle and climb down. Our feet hit the ground and the heat swells around us. We watch until the bus is gone and then start down the road. We are going west, on to find a quiet place, but we can only guess the distance; all we know is an indistinct spot on a map. Motorcycles growl past. Vans and trucks carrying more people than the air-conditioned bus that
» Continue reading Unknown Places by Owen Tucker…
Listen to a podcast of Nathan Graziano’s “Memorial Day Weekend.”
The snow had finally melted, though the lake was still too cold for swimming. For the first time in six months, cars rumbled down the dirt road leading to Lake Winona.
These cars—mostly SUV’s and family wagons with Massachusetts plates—brought handsome bespectacled fathers and tired pretty mothers with vague hangovers; teenage sons wearing headphones and teenage daughters waiting to burst out of their bathing suits. They brought canoes strapped to roofs and canisters of propane; grocery bags full of frozen meat and fresh produce. They brought beer, bottles of
» Continue reading Memorial Day Weekend by Nathan Graziano…
One day my uncle decided to leave the house he shared with my grandmother and get a pack of cigarettes. That’s a routine task for anybody but a schizophrenic. My grandmother called me and asked if I’d search the neighborhood for him. I was unusually calm about the whole affair, and remember driving around in my truck thinking everything would be all right. My intuition was correct. I didn’t find him, but a kind realtor did and brought him back to grandma’s house. I always marveled at my grandmother’s poise in dealing with my uncle. After all, she was
» Continue reading Uncle Boo by Abby Rotstein…
Listen to a podcast of Antonia Crane’s “Visions: Where the Locals Go.”
It was early and Cheetahs was dead but we had to be dressed and on the floor by seven. Dressed. Meaning, in our underwear. A leggy suicide girl with a Mohawk got up from her card game and pressed her cheek against our floor manager’s hairy chest. “We’re starving, Vinny. At least get us a pizza.” He mumbled something about piranhas and walked away. Her desperation cracked the veneer of her tight Hollywood smile and she clung to her Hello Kitty purse where there was nothing but
» Continue reading Visions: Where the Locals Go by Antonia Crane…
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