We Curate
Increasingly, our attention and choices are steered by algorithms. Creative people can be boosted by them, but also influenced, curated and even punished by them. To give an example, an…
Fallen Leaves
Alphonso sat cross-legged in the direct center of an asphalt square. Around him, painted white lines formed parallel teeth, or so he thought. Once there were cars. There must have…
Sex Shop Therapy
You see, there is no mistaking it: when the lights go out. I held her right foot. “Eyes on me, okay? When you feel like you’re fading, eyes on me.” “Okay!”…
Two Girls Ghost Their Parents… • Wool of Bat and Tongue of Dog
Two Girls Ghost Their Parents While Riding to Fairmount CemeteryConsider the breezy freshtug and tumbleplaying games with ghostsin the cemeteryuntil stone doors openfor hummingbirdsto flutter inside as they dance in…
As I empty my menstrual cup… • The Wait
As I empty my menstrual cup, I think of the Venus flytrapSquatting on the bathroom floor, toes curled against the wet,I imagine the inside of a bladderwort and its watery…
A Ghost Story
This isn’t really a ghost story. It probably has nothing to do with a ghost. The rational, objective, material account doubtless goes something like this: Mike and Jane bought a bouncer…
Camellia
To be a tiny snake in an enormous blossom.Think of it as thick, pink, complicated.The sensation is from the windwhen there is no wind (runninginto you but saying nothing, observingfrom…
To Make a Cut
I was nine when my mother first told me the story of the Leech Woman, a creature who lives in our town’s marshes and deeper woods. She said that the…
Cinnamon & Peaches • Ortho Novum
CINNAMON & PEACHESThe day after your mothertries to kill herself,she tells you over the phoneabout the ladies she invitedin for a visit that afternoon.What a gay ol’ time they hadat…
The Hollow
Marcel Tabasco stared into the bell jar, at the green, fluorescent swirls roiling inside their glass prison. He tipped his wide-brimmed preacher’s hat against the low sun to better see…