Stay updated with breaking news from Issue 161. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
I had been ridden all night and woke up wet and intemperateand walked out because of the economy and back without a single pieceof fruit or one end of a halter around a chestnut mare. Spit and hissfrom the electrical, although when the bulbs lit up I was awed andat the same time the slave trade, the treaties torn up and the landgrabbed, and my mother burned in her Marine
This morning, I step outside to pick strawberries, no coat. That’s not a good idea, my whole family tells me, one by one, through a half-open door. I’m trying to convince myself that someone is stirring milk and a little honey into your oatmeal. Someone is shaking her head, Nope, you can’t wear sandals in winter. There’s no word for who you are to me. Close is ghosts, though
His car is a nervous breakdown, scattering chrome along the motorway. He gasps through panic attacks in tunnels and medieval towers. The falconry display goes on regardless and eejits in velour have a crack at each other with plywood lances. I’m in fugue state, headphones glued to me as mum calls to accuse him of kidnapping. Come for a drink, he says. No. Retreat to the
If Jenn were a table, she’d be solid mahogany, much like the rest of the furniture in this stereotype of an open-floor-plan space. Except Dan could feel her chest heaving against him, her ribcage pressing into his flesh. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pushing her toward the door. She stood in place, steadfast, her back rooted against the wall.
Detailed descriptions of a father’s brutality. Graphic images of a boy, dreaming about food at night, his stolen transistor radio spilling James Brown’s good, good lovin over his pillow. This poem may unfold, in detail, a husband’s violence toward a wife. May run time in a circle. May reveal the husband’s plush red hands abbreviating his wife’s neck on a crisp November