April 2010
17 posts
5 tags
The Prostitute by Derek O'Neill
It was dark and the street reflected our headlights in the puddles of the day’s rain. A man walked down the sidewalk in front of us and Jen squeezed my hand. It was late at night and only Le Monde Café was open. Jason was to meet us, but I couldn’t be sure he was going to be there. “But anyway,” Jen said as she opened the café door in front of me, “this dickweed in class today kept starting these...
3 tags
How to Graduate College With Style by Ferris...
Shit. How did this happen? How could have this happened? I never thought this moment would actually get here. GODDAMMIT. Stupid Graduation What the hell am I going to do now? For about four years, I have lived in this blissful world…a bubble of happiness, where nothing mattered that I didn’t want to matter. I was the master and commander of my own destiny. Then I got an email from the college...
4 tags
Niño Dan McCloskey
When we were younger the birds flew higher for us. I didn’t care then. Birds would be an obtainable goal; when I was older, I’d stand taller, and my arms may dare to grasp one of these winged creatures and ground it, cage it, a token of my success. Obtainable goals weren’t my thing. All I could think about was the moon, and every night my outstretched palm would cradle its dim...
5 tags
Online Only Content: Safe Place #2 by Zoë...
I suppose we have a lot of them. We find new ones to replace, or at least join, the one we first find. I’m sitting at mine now, Feeling that sense because of it and because you know thunderstorms always make me see your face. Just hearing the quiet rain whisper your name is enough to make me stop writing this, stop writing and pick up this phone in my lap. But I don’t. Maybe it’s the 14-year-old...
4 tags
Chicago by Zoe Woodbridge
Your sister made Campari and I hated it but I drank it because I was eighteen and you were twenty-one and they were older than us in more ways than one. I didn’t care for the drinks. I just cared for the mornings, waking up to that bird in the dogwood outside our window, sometimes next to you. Though you might’ve been gone already, slipped away from under the sheets while I was dreaming of missing...
5 tags
Samantha’s Child by Adam Church
Darling girl, never got in trouble, except for not listening to mother’s words. She doesn’t understand why her stomach trips over its own two feet spilling out into the toilet. She doesn’t understand the weight she has put on calling it college pounds. Praying it is college pounds. The sonogram shows something she never dreamed: a parasite fidgeting inside, molding into a person. She flutters...
5 tags
Poetry by Emily Broderick
Night of the Ball by Emily Broderick On the day of the ball, I took your hand and led you to the cemetery where you lost your glass slippers once, and maybe a little more when the sun was still up and your mother was still alive. I wanted to show you the ghosts that blink like fireflies to find their true loves in the shadows of the tree planted before the city was reduced to rubble and I became a...
Shane Sinclair by Ricky Davis
Sometimes when I wake up I remember a time when I would get up and look in the mirror and think about how much more interesting ugly things are. Brush, brush, brushing my teeth and looking at my face. I can’t really remember any. Any faces at all. What faces would pass by the window that looked like the faces shaped the way they were supposed to be shaped. Instead, every night ten plastic faces...
4 tags
Regress by Allison Fischbach
The taste of spring is in the air, yet it’s still too early and too chill for the green buds to safely come out. Before us, running the length of a football field is a straight shot of two iron rails stretching out towards the perspective point resting somewhere in the distance where it always stays but never is. We had just eaten dinner and the sweet promise of a new warm evening drove us out of...
5 tags
Expiration Dates By Emily Kate Brown
Milk going bad and yogurt somehow getting too bacteria-y are irritating parts of our daily lives. Lots of things expire: cell phone plans, leases, credit cards. Shelf life applies to more than just veggies. Relationships expire. Friendships. Patience. Lives. Some things go bad and some things just end. Some things are questionable. Like, does tuna go bad? Seems like it should. Are cans somehow...
5 tags
Deirdre by Amber L. Maczaczyj
She lets her tea sit too long. It festers until mold grows in cups hidden amongst piles of laundry on her desk. She collects twigs and branches as if to build a nest to house her neuroses. She’s not the kind of girl you’d want to keep around. But her things smell of peppermint, dried leaves and oranges and, if she can, she’ll love you with all her heart.
5 tags
Hitching at the Trading Post by Allison Novak
The guy in the red shirt and I are talking about Little Miss Sunshine, and I forget his name for a second and take a quick glance at his nametag. “Nate,” I say, “I love that movie.” So far we have just about everything in common, including a minimum-wage job for the long summer ahead. The only difference in our jobs is that he’s a cashier and I fold t-shirts and pretend to be useful. I’ve only...
5 tags
Endgame: Bullshit by Mary DiAngelo
“They” say that I should stop and smell the roses, live each day like it is my last, take life by the horns (or by another plural appendage, whichever you prefer). I say that this is a load of clichéd bullshit. These are phrases that we often hear as hopeful college students, and yet we rarely know how to follow them. Truly, how are we to know the location of life’s horns, let alone how to seize...
4 tags
Poetry by Jenna Moore
The Truth about Penelope Jenna Moore The damned dog was always howling for a man that is not coming, relinquished the right to pillow against her chest, sweat slicked skin. Her fingertips followed climax of waves churning, touching, their bedroom window, pounding ceaselessly against the shore. A moment passed – envious of this sea for knowing the lines of his body, for the seduction holding him....
5 tags
Distance Between Our Lips Sarah Gumbel
Smoother then cream, licked up by the sandpaper tongue of a cat, whose whiskers, long and white, twitch, delicately, sensing the distance, between face and bowl. Such is your face, milky, sweet and silently watching, as I, smiling, take you in, eyebrows twitching, thinking of how far the distance is between my lips, and yours. Paris Shoots Sarah Gumbel The strings of a bow, trained and taut,...
4 tags
Thesis by Colony Lollmen
She swiveled towards me in her chair as I held my breath on the other side of the desk, waiting for her words to designate my undergraduate fate. “Your thesis,” she said, “It’s good.” The entire world changed color. I saw rainbows. I almost melted into a puddle of “happy” and “WTF” on the floor. I may not have a planned future or a job or even job prospects, but by God I had written my thesis and...
5 tags
Shane Sinclair by Ricky Davis
Sometimes when I wake up I remember a time when I would get up and look in the mirror and think about how much more interesting ugly things are. Brush, brush, brushing my teeth and looking at my face. I can’t really remember any. Any faces at all. What faces would pass by the window that looked like the faces shaped the way they were supposed to be shaped. Instead, every night ten plastic faces...