The surly simian returns in Alex Schumacher’s latest Mr. Butterchips!
The dog’s head lifted from where he lay in a bed of dirt. He looked up with dulled eyes, panting in the blunt rays of an indifferent scorching summer sun. A heavy chain held him to a weathered post, its radius too small to reach the shade of a nearby battered and slumping back porch. Sweat trickled down the center of my back as I walked towards him.
Things … aren’t great, but we’re here for you.
I love Vicente Fernandez &
Brittany Beyoncé & Gaga
Ketchup with my torta
Wine with my tacos
She is born to blossom.
Her painted ghost wanders,
Haunting the meadow
And whispering to trees.
venus transverses the sky
planes crisscross the globe
with a sneeze, i mumble a false prayer
like the beautiful lotus-bud arguing with the wild dandelion
the night stays with us, we stay with it too
not knowing what new name to give to our children
who are beginning to ask: “what is in a name anyway?”
Dolly pondered from her place at the kitchen sink, the room littered with dishes. She hadn’t remembered buying so many dishes and wondered how they would fit inside her cabinets, which were too small. Each dish needed washing, which brought her back to her everyday question, is this what it’s like, standing alone at the sink while the child drools?
i know queerness doesn’t exist
for a person with large breasts
or for a person who can’t decide
if they’re in love with masculinity
or the freedom it affords you
careless desire for love
forbidden intimacy
my anxiety abated
two perfect halves
naked soft and sleek
nightmare brusque dark
it has to go somewhere
why not your clavicle?
she wishes she could stay
vulnerable: open like a barn door breeze
beasts shuffle in, smell sweet H.
the moon cuts through the dark
you trace small circles
across the top of my hand
with your middle finger
men call the golden steppes of russia
death on a rocky crag
how many blessings to see this land
I’ve always been this way: open, friendly, disarming, talkative. Whatever you want to call it, it’s an act. I'm as calculated as a new student on the first day of school. See, I’ve trained myself to ward off dangers with words.
His name is Bobby, but often, he responds to the call of Booby. We are grown, up, but he stays Booby to the best of us. Who would name a cat Bobby or Booby? Beats me. Like orange and its equal-opposite.
blue like Drano / sun-washed / sitting / tested /rippled midsection / conspired against / harmless / bonded to the wall / between his lips / nothing to hold it
“ … the reality is that Diana, and the Wonder Woman film itself, cannot escape the male gaze.”
Tessa tiptoed over to the bag. Its presence was heavy in the room. Her hand moved, delicately, towards the zipper, as if she were disarming a bomb. She didn’t know if she wanted to see what was inside, and yet, she moved the zipper along its designated path, her hand acting of its own accord.
Of these three words (liar, whore, communist), it was the middle one which gave Sheila the greatest pride. In another world, another life, she would have worn it as a badge of honor. But it was November 1961- a full two years before the philandering President of the United States was shot to death in Texas- and a lying communist whore was not widely perceived as a great thing to be.