Inspiring the Text: Two Playlists
by Scott Bassis
The editors love how cinematic "The Untold Story of Pedro's 'Secret Self'" is, so we asked author Scott Bassis to curate a playlist and/or watchlist to accompany the piece. He…
Inspiring the Text: Two Playlists
Tarot Writing: A Craft Exercise
by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens
Eight of Swords Key Phrase: Time is running out. Are you participating in your own execution? Poetry prompt: What truth are you refusing to see? Write a poem with these words: blindfold, circle,…
Who Do You Call, What Do You Say?
My eighty-year-old minister friend in central Louisiana emails me about a young woman’s desperate drive from Alexandria to Amarillo. Earlier that evening, a parishioner brought the twenty-two-year-old’s distraught parents to…
The Untold Story of Pedro’s “Secret Self”
Pedro had been refining his song for five years before he gave it to Kelly Whalen. The first few lyrics and a hint of melody…
Not Yet Young
When you've worn enough of then and soon and gone so unsewn of the fingering light. When brittle your heart in bone and blue, it’s time to know—by blood through…
Exposure
March wind flays my flinching skinstrained taut across bowed shoulders like a cagoule stripped of rainproof coating clammy with sweated smallstuff trapped in the felted layers of my torso’s winter…
Tom Is Dead
Once I was friends with two brothers. I had a falling out with both of them. Eight months later, their dad was hit by a…
Dislocation • Autumn, with Dog • Yew
DislocationI was hiking when my torso, it twisted. My left arm, it fell out. I felt the two knobs where my shoulder had been, swept my finger across the bottom…
The Tongue
The man hadn’t always lived in the monster’s mouth, but it had been so long, he couldn’t remember much before. A comforting fantasy was that he’d jumped off some…
Insomnia
It helps to cup my balls. They get coldthis time of year.The other hand is restingon my lower belly where Carlos Castaneda said a luminous band of light pulses out…