Scrambleface
They’re holding the needles poised at the tips of their noses. Cross-eyed with nervous concentration, focusing on the point, the sharp end, the sliver of metal all set to…
Survival Tactics: open pit by Jose Antonio Villarán
open pit by Jose Antonio Villarán (Counterpath Press, 2022). What is this? A play? A poem? A polemic? Yes. Jose Antonio Villarán’s open pit: a story about morococha…
Living Out of Time: Flux by Jinwoo Chong
Flux by Jinwoo Chong (Melville House, 2023). Since moving to the Bay Area in 2018, I have felt unmoored in time. “A few days ago,” I might begin…
Kaleidoscope of the Uncanny: Dereliction by Gabrielle Octavia Rucker
Dereliction by Gabrielle Octavia Rucker (The Song Cave, 2023). a couple other versions of me sharing cognac, shooting dark brown out crystalline pteropods. Gabrielle Octavia Rucker’s Dereliction is…
Fata Morgana
When Sam’s parents had taken him to see the last remaining polar bear, they’d sweated in line for hours. Lizzie had been there, too. In the parking lot their…
If Men Had Wings
If men had wings, we would hear nothing but their beating. Some would learn how to tune out the takeoffs, while others would start their day by donning a…
Velvet Knob
The hog farmer is grindstone apples, seek-no-furthers, he is primrose balm, mayhaw and sorrel and scuppernong butters, he is carved corn-knife handles and stocking stretchers and tiny mounted soldiers:…
Must-See Spots in Boston, MA
Lush, 144 Newbury St., Boston, MA When I heard the bombs go off, I was standing in this shop with a tiny box of their “solid toothpaste” in my…
Salt River Canyon
When we drive through Salt River Canyon on US 60, the highway connecting the Tucson desert to the pine-forested mountains of our childhoods, I ask my husband to pull…
Guilty Parties
Every Monday morning before school, we assembled in class lines in the covered playground, from shortest to tallest. On the first day of second grade, we were the four…