I can’t remember why “boomerang” brings me so painfully into my own sights. The medicine has stopped nothing, nor was it intended to. These twin jars of split peas, I boil them for days. They will not soften, as I do. I try to work up the nerve to listen to some music. Is it so wrong to end a sentence with a pronoun? I haven’t licked a stamp for years, not with this tongue. You have to run to taste the wind, says my dog from his leash, says my friend from Orofino, to his. Chase the grass, then, in the wind down a long hill. Suffering is not, as it turns, its own schadenfreude. My friend stayed wrong about that. My stomach: still tender where she shot it, though I did not feel anything at the time. I felt nothing. It was quicker than the fall of an eyelash. The beauty berry bushes have spread, and their day-glo fruit hangs in bends throughout the forest. Words that matter can’t be words.
Further Reading
The Gravel Path of Belief, Non-Belief, and the Ambiguous In-Between
by McKenzie Watson-Fore
This essay is written by MAYDAY magazine’s Critic in Residence for Spring 2025. Sharp bits of gravel poke through my leggings into my thighs. Chilly autumn air wafts from the moonlit surface of the Big Thompson River to where I am sitting in the middle of the path. Flecks of cigar paper cling to my […]
BARRY SCHWABSKY’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
I like Kent’s idea of unsigned reviews because I like the unspoken idea that would necessarily have to go in tandem with it: substantial monetary remuneration for the reviewer. Because, after all, there are two main reasons to publish. One is vanity, the desire for kudos. The other is the possibly nobler Grub Street need […]
GNOMIC SAVIORS: EDITORS ON EDITING – WHY DO EDITORS EDIT?
Okla Elliott: I feel most editors get into the editing business at least in part to correct certain wrongs they see in contemporary literature. There is of course the love of literature in general that brings us to this work, but what kinds of literature do you see as needing more airtime and how do you […]
