The Future of America has big biceps. He wears tight shirts to show them off. He saves his money to buy steroids to keep them big. This matters. He wants people to stare at his arms. He is a he, when he’s not a she. When he’s a she, she cracks her gum and pads […]
Poetry
Butterfly Balloon by Alyse Bensel
Opaline or starburst or emerald green— descriptors for barbus or brochis or gynmocorymbus. The bubble pump flares sidefins and whiskers. Aquarium fish appear as mechanical wind-up toys. They troll the bottom of pop-rock gravel. A floundering Butterfly Balloon Molly performs a sideshow for the children who muddy the clarity with their fingers or cause underwater earthquakes with a tap […]
ALEXANDRIA by Theodore Worozbyt
Your request for a renewal has been denied. All analecta must be returned to the Gorgon. Please walk on either lip of the systolic topos. So the signs read, as I took floor numbers from the occupants and pressed square lights the artificial color of forgetting. A caretaker or building engineer wheezed in a mushroom buff […]
SNOWY EGRET by Daniel Wolff
This Tuesday in April, the first egret of last Fall flies back across the rain-soft sky. It’s as white and brief as a dream. When it lands on the rock dam, black water rushes past its yellow-green feet. Exactly as (I’d almost swear) before. But where was this water then? And where was I? And […]
PARADE by Robert Walser (translated by Daniele Pantano)
Flawed elements naturally asserted themselves again this time; I’m thinking of important behavior, incidentally, I’m not going to use rhyme in this poem, so as not to make it sound playful, and because today I want to turn poetry into a children’s game, o, I saw the founder of a publishing house coming up rosy […]
SUMMER by Robert Walser (translated by Daniele Pantano)
In summer we eat green beans, peaches, cherries and melons. In every sense nice and long the days form a sound. Trains travel through the country, flags flap merrily on rooftops. How nice it is in a boat surrounded by gradual heights. The high peaks still wear snow, flowers give fragrance. On the lake you […]
THE READER by Robert Walser (translated by Daniele Pantano)
With one of those train station dime store books, he settled into his nest. He saw how the hotel governesses banished him with their disapproving stares. The nest I’ve just mentioned bribed him with its privacy, it was a fine spot shaded by delicate twigs, above him and his book, his dreaming, the putti dip […]
THE MEANING OF THE SEA by Alexander Vvedensky (translated by Alex Cigale)
to understand it once and for all one must live life as in reverse and to take walks in the forest while tearing out your hair whole and when you get to know the fire of the light bulb or of the oven say to it why are you shining you the fire are candle’s […]
SWIRLING SANDS by David Allen Sullivan
Underneath burqa’s black is a Guns N’ Roses t-shirt and tight jeans she snakes into each morning. As they pat her down at the checkpoint she bobs her head in time to Welcome to the Jungle, leaking through ear jacks. * Didn’t sign up to guard no oil ministry papers in an empty building while […]
I AM GOING TO THE PICNIC by Hannah Stephenson
I am going to the picnic, and I’m bringing a weather vane. I am going to the picnic, and I’m bringing a weather vane, and a wraparound porch: wooden square footage that grips the ankles of a house. I am going to the picnic, and I’m bringing a lightning rod, a wraparound porch, and a […]
