Lobotomation is a meditation on the human condition. Of course, I am far from being the first, and far from being the last person to write about the topic. However, the improbability, the banality, and the brutality of life never ceases to fascinate me. In Lobotomation, I am exploring what it’s like to be alive,… Read More Lobotomation by Jenya Doudareva
“If Kerouac & Carver had a baby and Hemingway was the midwife” – Patrick Paul Henningham The characters in these stories live in rural towns and cities where alcohol and opioids are a necessary part of daily existence. Michael Lafontaine writes honestly about relationships and the struggles of everyday ordinary people. Please Don’t Argue With… Read More Please Don’t Argue With Me, Okay By Michael Lafontaine
The poems in this first collection from Michael Lafontaine were mainly written in the author’s mid twenties when he travelled extensively through the United States & Canada detailing his travels in the form of poetry and prose like his heroes Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver & Ernest Hemingway. Michael Lafontaine was educated at Macquarie… Read More Riding in the passenger seat while the driver is on crack by Michael Lafontaine
In his third short story collection, Absolute Invention, Sheldon Lee Compton returns to the realms of imagination belonging to magical realism and fabulist fiction. This collection fires up the world of creative creation he first dealt with in his collection Where Alligators Sleep. You’ll encounter a town that beautifies amputation, ghost dinosaurs, dragons that live… Read More Absolute Invention by Sheldon Lee Compton
It was about time to renew summer. Traditionally, a person or a group that had the necessary power would do it. It was unclear why it was done, or who in particular was executing it (because it fluctuated so frequently), or by what mechanism, but miraculously, the job was done consistently, if not entirely predictably.… Read More The Prescription by Jenya Doudareva
When the dog died, I carried his corpse in my arms around the block ’til my running shoes were filled with blood and my toes loaded with blisters. The last time I saw my sister was after the argument that foreshadowed her catapult from the Golden Gate Bridge. I hear her bones cracking in my… Read More Crabs Feasting on Eyeballs by Matthew Dexter
The sudden ear, electric and astonished: somber, I am told, rhymes with you, hombre. I think of a shadow, l’ombre. The shadow that rules my life. All unmarried bachelors run merrily from their wives. Quel dommage! I lost my summer millionaire by December’s dark gray road. My sudden ear green and bent. Hombre, words lift:… Read More The Piano by Raphael Maurice
SWEATY HALLWAYS OF THE LONE STAR The hallways of My apartment complex In Austin Are soaked in water All from a Recent storm Rain Lighting Winds Thunder The whole Texas Enchilada Tenants with wet Shoes brining it in And open windows Within these pathways To all the units That let the downpours In The following… Read More sweaty hallways of the lone star and other poems by Cole Bauer
Alone on the Couch with a Gun in my Mouth Someone asked me: How do you roll? I said that every so often I wind up on the couch, I sit all alone with a gun in my mouth. Suzy, I call her, Suzy as in Suicide Suzanne baby, is there a chance? can we… Read More The Prophet of Regret #10 and other poems by Steve Passey
Rituals and reassurances are like a weathervane. And I love you like the way that people love Cheddar Bay biscuits—how that’s a thing; like when you go to Red Lobster just for them. Or the way I can only really eat a meal when I’m re-watching a movie I like. Your right palm has an… Read More Publix Fried Chicken by Jane-Rebecca Cannarella
After the suicide and after the stories themselves there is usually the same conversation about Breece D’J Pancake. This revolves around a general question: Was he the real deal? It’s been stated in a lot of different ways, but that has been the basic mystery for some: Real deal or simply laying on the hillbilly?… Read More REAL DEAL HILLBILLY by SHELDON LEE COMPTON
A dead squirrel was laying in the middle of the sidewalk. Cause of death – unknown. Folks running around on their morning business in sombre palette suits, as per relevant dress codes, for the most part managed avoiding a collision. They weren’t always graceful but pushed one another occasionally, always with an automatic “Oh pardon… Read More The Squirrel Incident by Jenya Doudareva
More Pills, Please I’ve got a song stuck in my head I’ve never heard And photographs of girls long gone Dancing behind these shuttered eyes Oh shit, I think it’s happening again Let’s see what the walls have to whisper tonight And now I’m paranoid Like a basket case Like a serial killer when the… Read More More Pills, Please and other poems by Benjamin Blake
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