A knife will kill a zombie.
The hero shows us that a dozen times,
and if there’s only one
way out, you take it, fast.
And I know the world will end in a ball of fire that will look a LOT like kind of like exactly like the Tide detergent logo.
It's not about the pasta! he screams over and over again. It's ludicrous. Is pasta a codeword for drugs? Are they actually fighting over Alfredo or something?
Don’t trust men in broom closets. Don’t trust men in studios. Don’t trust men. Unless they have money and promises. Then trust them even less.
I’ve been curious. I have a secret that sounds like pieces
of silver earrings jangling against earlobes, or the highest
tiny pinky key on the baby piano
afternoon phone calls split
his concentration, the arch
in her frantic foot now sharp
as modern time’s resolution.
On the day of Loki’s last class, it all clicks. We perform all the tasks correctly and pass the test. Loki gets a Fozzie Bear toy and a certificate, and I take some pictures of him in a little doggie graduation hat. I’ve never been prouder. We did it! Together. We are a team.
So he left, a Spider-man Quitter
Searching for a slice of shade,
under the pounding sun
So little difference between
a voice from the com on his chest
and his own voice, answering.
Captain, Captain. Please acknowledge
but the bottles were misplaced
they were shelved until a forensic scientist
unpinned them from legend
A cop as underwitted as an egg stares us down. Like he's never seen two imaginary robot friends who often get mistaken for puppets. I point a finger gun at the cop but he doesn't seem to react.
you thought
he had a heart but that was just
my body he morphed into music
His single-minded determination to find someone who shares his Defining Characteristic represents one of the main problems in reducing a human being to words on a screen: it leads to a focus on superficial things that ultimately mean nothing.
Alex Schumacher's latest Mr. Butterchips explores some infamous "lost episodes", as part of our April Pop Culture Issue.
Your dad is curious about the beer, but your brother and uncle and cousin look at it and put it back down—more for me you say to yourself. Fuck those fuckers.
Kailey Tedesco’s visually stunning debut collection shapeshifts. Whether musing over mermaids or lamenting death, its mythical & modern turns are riveting, meaning fascinating but also fastening. Her keen detailing, language, & pacing rivet poems that feel perennial like flowers or recurring nightmares. Shirley Jackson would approve--Tedesco throws us in dark water, walks us around dusty attics. Gaze into crystal while she draws tarot in her burlesque opium den. However, though magic carries these poems, they scrutinize suicide, puberty, misogyny & math(!). It’s not heavy handed but intimate as walking alongside a friend. Sojourn in this “sap-stained forest” but don’t expect to walk through unscathed.
PODCASTOrdinary GraceWilliam Lemon
A podcast on spirituality & religion, hosted by the Founding Editor of Drunk Monkeys. This episode features an interview with Alex Schumacher, independent comics artist, and creator of the comic strip Mr. Butterchips. Alex speaks about his Jewish upbringing, falling away from the faith, and the spirituality inherent in the creative process.
“The back of the house still smelled like death,” Jette Harris (author of COLOSSUS/Run Rabbit Run Book 1) writes, opening Two Guns with clear intent. Harris fully intends to plunge us deeper into madness than Book 1 ever dreamed of achieving. In a story that continues what she started with the very good COLOSSUS: Run Rabbit Run Book 1, Harris shows a wealth of improvement from one already-exceptional book to the next. Two Guns expands brilliantly and powerfully on Avery Rhodes. At the same time, Two Guns also gives us new characters, while expanding the universe established one book prior. Two Guns is a near-flawless continuation of Harris’ ongoing story. Optimize your enjoyment of this title by checking out the previous installment.
This book doesn’t celebrate the fact that like the rest of us, Mallory Smart doesn’t have a lot of actual answers. Art doesn’t guarantee that, no matter how good you are. I Want to Feel Happy is a very good body of work from a very good writer. Part of that is because Smart is both attracted to and repelled by concrete answers---or conclusions that may be traumatic, even fatal, but are at least conclusions nonetheless. She decimates her life with a level of honesty that could chew other people’s teeth. She then rebuilds, and starts over. That path could take her anywhere, and I am pleased that she is taking us along for the decimation.
Available from Cheeseburger Nebula Press, Do$e from William S. Bonnie is a stark, almost madden travelogue. This isn’t just because Bonnie’s latest poetry collection references travel at great length, with the distance achieved by chemical means, and/or through a hyper-focused desire for freedom. It is also because the book drinks deep from Bonnie’s memories, anxieties, and ambitions, and then spits them out, creating a miraculously careful mess. Bon’ Voyage is just one example of Bonnie making us equal parts uncomfortable and captivated, as he breathes his own unique, vital brand of life into the familiar roads he describes. Seward might be exhausted, but his writing is dangerously alert.