It’s the ‘just’ that matters. It makes the experience manageable for people who have no trouble laying down and sinking head-first into an undisturbed pond. Insomniacs, however, know the secret of that ‘just,’ the reversal of physics that floats our fatigue-heavy heads on the water’s surface in ways even Peter’s doubt couldn’t sink.
That aluminum dent,
that lack of shatter,
satisfies like nothing other, nothing
Staring through heavy glasses that made his faded hazel eyes seem oversized, Norman spilled coffee on the paper. “Damnation!” Norman leaned back, balancing on one skinny, pale leg—a leg all the whiter for the black bedroom slipper—as the other leg swung in an arc to prop open the door. “Damnation all to hell,” Norman proclaimed, straightening up and spilling more coffee as the slipper fell off.
There were a few incidents that semester. Olivia was asked to pose for a painter who posted his need for a model on the community board online. He worked from photos for his surreal realistic paintings. She came home with a picture on her phone of her sitting topless with her right hand over her left breast.
Their bows held correctly (almost), their fingers wiggling their vibratos to beat the band, and their faces showing just the correct amount of emotional ecstasy. However, when the sound reached my ears, I literally started laughing aloud. It was the cheesy sound of a keyboard synthesizer. It was like being promised expensive dark chocolate chips only to discover they were really carob chips.
I’ve been talking to ghosts most of my life.
Sometimes they tell me things I don’t understand, like
Do you know a Venus day is longer than a Venus year?
I hear this and just feel confused.
ever watch
someone
smoke
because they can’t just
stand outside
The last night in Beijing was heavy. I was in the kitchen to help my mom wash dishes after dinner. My father was taking care of the table in the living room. My mom started crying after she turned on the tap. She wanted the sounds of water flowing to hide the sounds of her crying.
She picked up the carnation-pink phone next to the bed and dialed her husbands office. He’d be working late, he said, and that gave her joy. He was nice enough, but boring and safe. Adventure was what she wanted, but really she just needed more time to herself. With him at work, she wouldn’t need to be home to start dinner for a few hours. Time enough to get lost in this incredible feeling of abandon.
BOOK REVIEWS / The Craving / Kristen Renee Gorlitz
Writer Kristen Renee Gorlitz and her team of collaborators have released a graphic novel entitled The Craving. Independently published through Mindweird Media, the story traces a zombie apocalypse and how it affects one couple. Before you complain about the oversaturation of zombie themed stories in literature, comics, and film, consider reading the graphic novel. Whereas Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead helped reinvigorate the horror subgenre and solidify modern zombie tropes, Gorlitz’s The Craving is more so concerned with character development and inverting reader expectations. This results in an intelligent and diverting story.
100 WORD BOOK REVIEWS / Rusty Stars / Linnet Phoenix
Linnet Phoenix’s distinctive, deceptively soft works run an intriguing gamut of styles in Rusty Stars, available now from Between Shadows Press. Some of these poems are written as though each word needed to go deeper than the page and planet, with how pointedly they must have put to that page. Others are a hectic spill of metaphor and vital word choice. The manic tone of some of these pieces run next to the more reserved poems in a race that could honestly go on forever. No, maybe not forever; but this is still a collection I won’t forget anytime soon.
100 WORD BOOK REVIEWS / Love Letters from the Underground / Daniel W. Wright
“61/49” and “Heart of the Heartland” are two brilliant examples of the storytelling Dan Wright has in mind for Love Letters from the Underground, available now from Spartan Press. Dan’s poetry is well-constructed, because there is clearly an understanding of form, combined with the ability to manipulate the form to give these stories further layers. However, it is in the remarkable care for his subjects, particularly in their relationship to the often-unhappy world around them, where Wright leaves us with poems and narratives that are truly born out of the frustration or even anguish of the forgotten.
100 WORD BOOK REVIEWS / An A to Z of Elvis: Infrequently Asked Questions / Joe Shooman
One of the most appealing things about the richly illustrated, instantly likable An A to Z of Elvis, written with an attention to staying off the beaten path by Joe Shooman, is that you don’t have to really like Elvis Presley to enjoy this book. It would probably enhance your enjoyment of the book, which takes an alphabetical trip through Elvis basics, but also deviates frequently into the many cultural connections and threads with one relation to Elvis or another. However, I think anyone who simply appreciates the butterfly effect one human being can have on history can enjoy this.
Gabriel Ricard on Paramount, Zack Snyder, and Godzilla vs. Kong.
A scream pierced the air: all the chips were gone. Horror rippled through the crowd like a disease. The moon quickly assembled a search party. They were instructed to leave no planet unrotated. Some would even go as far as the corners of the universe. Luckily, Pollux had an emergency stash of chips in his safe, melting the screams into hysterical tears.
Generous verbosity. On dates you interrupt
doors for me. Slay dragons with your opinion.
Where would I be if you hadn’t told
me: Bernanke destroyed the American dollar
In some ways ATLA is the perfect show for where the world is today: lives uprooted by massive trauma; struggles to find ways of healing on the fly; acknowledgement of what’s been lost; fear of what might yet come; the mundane problems that can’t be ignored just because the world seems to be ending.
His voice, though. His voice. Soothing. Simple. Soft. Un-panicked. Unhurried. Reassuring. Masculine and strong, but sweet as a baby’s breath on your cheek. Ten thousand harps plucked at once. I’m sure Torrence has been trained to speak this way, but if you’re an angel, it probably comes naturally. Torrence was our voluntary angel.
The Reverend Cotton Marcus—played with convivial smugness by Patrick Fabian—knows that he and others in his profession are culpable in the deaths of mentally ill or neurodivergent people whose “exorcisms” came at the cost of their lives. In exposing exorcism for the sham that it is, Cotton hopes to curb the dangerous practice before it spreads any further.
Two twisted souls dressed up as divine lovers who complete each other without knowing it, and yet they keep their emotions back because they cannot bear to admit their co-dependence. Is it cultural differences that sacrifice our love in the end? Is it the scorn that one is invited to inflict upon the other person?