Christian Thorsberg after Sports Illustrated, 12 June, 1972 & memories            I.He’s juggling in his pinstripes,A red catcher’s helmet his afro’s crankcase,A loosie lolling between his teeth and tongue,Spinning three Rawlings like spheres of wrecking cement;Allen’s brashness makes him an infamous cover star,His Camel’s ashes mixing with rosin bag dustThe pitcher’s fingering on the mound… Read More Six Ways of Reaching the Stretch

Marcelo Quesada i looked out, saw thesick orange glow cut through the black,cut through the remains of Sun’s departure, the porch lights raging fierce above lonesome doors andlonesome alleyways and lonesome steps,all weathered down,their lonesomeness hanging thick in the air that fills. streetlights like exploding tangerines, rooftops cutting sharp at the peak, jutting down and… Read More the air that fills

Marcelo Quesada i saw how you sprung up, soles of your dirtied feet first,out from the ground and back on top of it. i saw you that day,when the earth opened up for you like a mother breaking open for her first-born, no, her second,maybe third;it’s like the ground awaited that violent thrashing before the… Read More primaveral

Natasha Sondakh she was too yellow for pale peopleso they told her to speak to starsinstead. her mouth dried up the first time, running out of commas to useand half words to say.she lay in a bed of toadstools like a meteor decaying in mist controlled bysweat dollars and cigarette smokethat ate into the stutter… Read More Saffron

Jonathan Van De Loo             Extravaganza! Antic fizz and bold theatrical exaggeration! Proud women, lovely boys, beautiful drag queens–             Few melodramas with such tragic underpinnings have ever made me feel so intensely happy! Grand movie stars, gorgeous frocks, wild wallpaper; a spectacular synthesis             Of lickable lollipop colors. His world is used to improvising.… Read More VI

Jonathan Van De Loo I do not recall the day my soul left my body. It floats above me, perched in the upper corner of every room with the glamour and stylized eye of a cinematographer. Hm. I miss the days when my eyes were open. Mornings like this I wish Matt Damon were still… Read More ,Like This

Elizabeth Vogt New York in high July, one boiling night,We shimmy through the crowds of sweat and smoke.The ground will cook our rubber sandal-treadsSo we keep moving, past the neon words,Halal trucks, and the stairway to the tracks.It’s ten and we are twenty and content(And she’s the kind of friend that makes you drunkWithout a… Read More Things we touched

BUT I KNOW IT’S REAL. Mariama Pouye I know what it is to sit on damp earth and feel the sun seep into your skin as wind softly plucks your arm hairs like guitar strings. I know the weight of a head on your shoulder and the slight ache you get from cradling it. These… Read More People like to say that perfection is a concept,

Mariama Pouye a twelve year old girl reads books filled with twelve year old girlswho do not notice themselves.sitting alone in a warm cafe,she feels longing for the first time. a fifteen year old girl walks to her car at nightfearing the tracking gaze of a passing man,wondering if she’d fear its absence even more.… Read More Margaret Atwood Says You Are Your Own Voyeur, I Ask Does Knowing That Help?

Tyler Holmes With lashes like a cartoon doe,And cheeks plump and rosy from the cold,I lift my little head (that’s quite heavy, for me)And say to another four year-old, who has just fallen downAnd scraped her knee:You’re too pretty to cry.     I’m seated cross-legged on your floor.I watch you dust your cheeks in… Read More Pretty