Contributed 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 someone to caress.
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.…
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…
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…
Sometimes I believe in something like karma, or not that, exactly, but the idea that if bad occurs to me, I probably deserve it, like the skinned knee I received after a jog—in my apartment complex, looking at my phone, I missed a step I’d walked down a hundred times. Or, the emails from a […]
The Beirut39 project began in March of 2009, at the Abu Dhabi Book Fair, when organizers threw open the following call: They wanted the 39 best young writers from what’s dubiously known as “the Arab World.” Organizers, who had already selected the “Bogota39” in 2007, gave their criteria: Writers must be under 40, they must […]
Peaches overflow the given bowl: a gift from two lovers no longer in love. One remarried a restaurant hostess. The other found new life in Connecticut. It’s cold for the first time this October. My coat fails my neck— I clutch its collar close and slip my fingers through the knit, […]
