Contributed By: Stephen Gibson
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 ball-gag riding bit, by chain.
Return to table of contents for Issue 12 Winter 2018.
It’s possible to loathe and desire the same thing. What the heart wants isn’t simple. It’s complex. In graphic novels heroines beg for it to sting. It’s possible to loathe and desire the same thing.…
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…
She wasn’t sure what happened, hearing the news— she was buying a pack of smokes at the corner (not for herself, she didn’t smoke, for her father). She wasn’t sure what happened, hearing the news:…
Clo needs to believe she’ll help to end the war and, with those others she lives with in the Haight, that she’ll actually find peace and love forever. She’s run away with a girlfriend—this…
A hometown is a nose bleed (or construction-site cement coursing through your parents’ veins) a warm current that even time cannot resolve Picking up a piece of the past is like picking up a fragment of bone, unearthing night’s dark flesh A hometown isn’t fertile soil (but it is a ferry) a poor and humble […]
Into a field of blue vervain & warm sticky stems of wild phlox a couple walks. He carries a bottle of wine, she glasses. They are drunk on the cooling last wisps of sunlight threading through a stand of trees at the field’s edge. She believes the field is temporary, the small task of flowers […]
A marine steps on the metal plate of an IED. His legs fly in opposing directions through the air. He lands on the ground with a thud, blood and exposed bone where limbs used to be. Jess switches off the TV. It’s just a movie. Just a movie. The days leading up to Cal’s […]
