Naked and obnoxious, with a stereo on multi-disc shuffle,
we dove so laughter would drop like pollen from our bodies,
Jason – always – leading the way.
Naked and obnoxious, with a stereo on multi-disc shuffle,
we dove so laughter would drop like pollen from our bodies,
Jason – always – leading the way.
I believe in the conservation
of birdwings, in tiny packages of light
& their insistence on shining
in the resurrection of dying things.
I don't remember where Mrs. Harding, our club sponsor/art teacher, was during all this. Probably in the art department's ventilation room. But I guess she needed to be high or whatever to deal with a bunch of fourteen to eighteen year olds singing in broken Japanese and wearing Naruto headbands.
It was weird. I was weird, as any of my classmates would have attested. Everything was weird, if you thought about it long and deeply enough.
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.