The need to be restrained is a given— by rope, by ball-gag riding bit, by chain: the art of knot tying is not for everyone, but the need to be restrained? A given. Everyone understands love brings pain— this is its visible, exaggerated expression. The need to be restrained is a given— by rope, by […]
Poetry
Japanese Bondage Erotica
Japanese Sex Doll Erotica
by Stephen Gibson
It’s possible in one’s soul to feel this lonely and, so, to purchase someone to caress, if not in flesh and blood, then in latex. It’s possible in one’s soul to feel this lonely. Girl-Who-Always-Smiles is an anomaly— Girl-Who-Opens-Mouth is big business. It’s possible in one’s soul to feel this lonely and, so, to purchase […]
The Children at the Wedding #3
by Darren Demaree
Some sons make great art & some sons punch great art & both kinds are good at parties. Return to table of contents for Issue 12 Winter 2018.
The Children at the Wedding #1
by Darren Demaree
Celebration of the celebration & holding all of the rhythms all at once, the lightning inside of the art museum is not always pinned to be a prize against the static walls; the lightning, the growl of the lightning is my children & they become the whole show as any dramatic weather can become the […]
The Fundamental
by Jesse DeLong
constants of physics— the speed of light, the absol- ute of gravitational attraction, the weak & the strong forces of our interactions. If we change any of these by the tiniest of amounts, nothing life-like would’ve ever emerged: no plants, no atmospheres, no solids, not even the elements except hydrogen & helium, but maybe not […]
Though Poetry Predates Literacy, and the Sonnet Has Been Around Since the Thirteenth Century, It Took Me Only Ten Minutes to Butcher One
by Jesse DeLong
Twenty-eight years—most of them spent fumbling with the wrappers of candy bars—have passed before I became curious enough about the brain to find, on the shelves of a Baton Rouge library, a book by Dennett, 20 years old now, which mentions, in passing, a work by Bach, who labored for four years to create and […]
Amaranthine Days
by Robert Cowan
Prologue See Dick and Jeanne meet at Syracuse. They played house on Falcon Avenue. They had fun. See Dick and Jeanne have three children: R. the dog, J. the cat, and R. the teddy bear. See Dick and Jeanne have a smashing time. Smash, glass, smash! See Dick and Jeanne separate in 1974 and lead […]
Girondinsville
by Nick Conrad
Metered sunshine. Wind rationed, and rain. A heaven for incrementalists, with chaos always just around the corner. Is it any wonder that he had grown too fond of night, of the ruined castles that lined the Rhine. What was there to do, now that the moon no longer drifted toward fullness, that tonight, orange sail […]
Transplant
by James Brunton
Do these Midwest hours render you speechless? Is it their sameness, their gradual changes, and then the terrible suddenness all of it must yield—a storm with no warning, a wreck in the field? This is the time of life for it, midway through. It is summer. There is the grinding away of work, the need […]
Bike/Building
by Devon Balwit
electric, my frame casement, sill, pedestal, pillar static, a geometry of holding up blue, my color intermediate, as of sky or sea on a sunny day concrete cloaked rebar, wrought iron, brick against brick set your crotch on me work me to a furious pedal ink-stained sky pierced by chimney and spire— dwellings’ exhausted exhalation […]
