Cash only for the
needle of gin, confetti
pitch of the sax,
and Capone.
Cash only for the
needle of gin, confetti
pitch of the sax,
and Capone.
We paint ourselves a mingled memory
of wet words in a clinging storm
that congeals pleasure into folds
and bitter flesh into pulpiness.
My mother wants the dead to go away,
tired of how they pop up among the list of the living,
in whatever the last profile picture they selected
not knowing it was the last.
I feel the draft from the hallway. I hear the scrape and clap of her pumps. Then she’s turning on the lights. She looks at the bottle of Burrowing Owl breathing on the kitchen table and nods. Her hands slide across her stomach. She looks down at me with the same expression every week: one part surprise that I’m actually there, one part a strong desire to laugh out loud.
how she stays silent the whole time.
Her eyes are closed and her lashes fan
out across her cheek:
I decided that this is what religion looks like.
In the bar, Miss Carey’s song on, “Honey.”
If you were ten years younger, had no kid
wee’d still be smoking along the river,
watching Frogtown ducks swimming in the dark.
Gabriel Ricard with an all-Shudder Halloween edition of Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo
You glance around at the same place that held birthdays, barbeques, movie nights. The memories burst from their unmarked graves at the back of your mind. They form a pool behind your eyes, congealing into bitter teardrops that are on the verge of falling. You blink them away, making it all nothing but a few wet spots on your sleeve before slouching to your room and locking the door.
The blood rushes in and out of my cheeks, a turbulent tide. I’m afraid of tomorrow. And every day after. I don’t close the door right away when you leave. I watch you pick a dandelion from the sidewalk and study it curiously. As if you’ve never witnessed an identity crisis before. I think you’re going to make a wish—hope that you do—hope that it’s about me—but instead you stick it under the windshield wiper of a stranger’s car before calling a Lyft. I watch the sun rise behind the vacation homes and it’s so painfully ordinary in comparison.
New to LA, and somewhat shy, I seldom spoke but often listened. The conversations weren’t profound, but they were somehow memorable, like when Gabriella playfully confronted Doris. “Oh, now, Doris, you won’t speak because you’re mad at me. But I can’t put those green beans in the soup when they’re still so fresh; we’ll use them tomorrow for the salad, I promise you.”
He asks me why my hand is on his shoulder. Um, well I don’t know, I respond. He takes my hand from his shoulder and holds it. He examines my hand, as if he has never seen it before. I wonder if he’ll do the same to my eyes, just like he used to when we’d spend our time alone. If I could, I’d faint.
A National Poetry Series winner, The Lumberjack’s Dove floored me. Nethercott has quilted an imaginative poem that feels immediate & timeless, often simultaneously. Her witchy, earthy, & philosophical narrative creation had me screenshotting pages & shouting “GURL” in a crowded Manhattan tavern. TLD’s magic entices but its surgical knowledge of the heart entrances with, in the words of Louise Glück, “unexpected lightness and buoyancy”. A beautiful parable, TLD explores love, ownership, loss, & storytelling. Nethercott throws haymakers of joy, surprise into what could be a bloody, sad tale. Delicious, endearing, it’s a successfully cast spell.
The Little Stranger contains everything that should result in an intelligent gothic chiller: atmosphere, methodical pacing, and a character-driven drama that hints at something grander beneath its surface horrors. Through its luscious cinematography, dense script, and acting strengths—Will Poulter is particularly excellent as a burned and shell-shocked war veteran—the film does an extraordinary job examining gender and 1947’s English class structure. Yet, the film is nearly derailed by its perplexing central conceit—is it a ghost or something else? By removing the horror elements, the film may have been a more effective standalone period piece about class relations and mental illness.
You don't have to be a fan of the original Halloween series in order to enjoy the new sequel; you really only have to like the first one, because everything after that is disregarded. Even a couple missteps and a strange bowl of party pudding (I mean what?!) don't detract from what is a pretty solid addition to the franchise, with plenty of gory nonsense to get you excited for the spookiest season of all. Jamie Lee Curtis is a treasure. We don't have to protect her, though; she's got it under control.
Erik Rasmussen’s dark, provocative debut novel, A Diet of Worms, avoids the sentimental as it weaves its way toward an ultimately compelling conclusion. From early on, Larry Morvan, Rasmussen’s young protagonist, wants readers to understand that he isn’t like the other boys who surround him. He admits, “I’m a low life, or something.” He frequently talks about his lack of money, the broken conditions of his home, and the horrible father he can’t escape. A long trip could save him, but, really, as A Diet of Worms reminds us, no one ever escapes the ghosts of youth. Here’s proof.
Part “true crime” podcast and part first person narrative, Sadie dares to push the boundaries of traditional YA suspense. While Sadie investigates the man she suspects to have murdered her sister, a journalist investigates Sadie’s disappearance—a year after she hit the road with a switchblade. During their investigations, both Sadie and the journalist uncover more darkness than either had anticipated. Like Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, Sadie dares you to open your heart to that darkness. And like all of Summers’ oeuvre, Sadie will have you holding your breath.
There are no shortage of films addressing the way we gather information in the age of social media, but what makes Searching more than just a gimmick (the film is told entirely through computer and phone screens) is the fine editing work and the multi-layered performance of John Cho as the missing girl’s father. Cho never goes big, and because we believe him we go along with some fairly hoary plot devices (the moment where we switch devices to follow along a car on Google Maps is unintentionally hilarious) to deliver a shockingly resonant narrative and emotional payoff.
Sean Woodard breaks down the use of music in Rob reiner’s 1986 coming-of-age classic Stand by Me.
EIC Kolleen Carney Hoepfner on the end of the summer and big changes ahead for Drunk Monkeys!
It wasn't clear what we were supposed to do now that we knew something existed that was 10 billion light years across. It wasn't clear how that information was supposed to affect our day-to-day. I continued using a brand of pomade called GOT 2B PLAYFUL that gave me a look I thought of as boyishly sophisticated.