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WRITING PROJECT by EMILY SLOTTA

October 21 2024
I can guide you through the beats of this, it’s pretty simple.

First pretend you’re girl Hemingway in Bushwick. Take a sip of hot black coffee. Write the sun also rises in miniature, over and over again in small concentric circles, but do it without any war.

Here’s how it sounds. Short sentences interspersed with a few run-ons, integrating the traditional and the sensitive in fragmented pieces across your observations of modern everyday life. I’m bedazzling a telephone pole, gluing mirrors to a gas pump. I’m touching lightly on abjection or gore. Some people do this better than others...

an atom is mostly empty by OWEN AVERY

October 7 2024
I’m ten. We are at Momom and Popops’ house. Django and Luna are there. Me and Mom and Popop and Elias walk through East Rock Park. The dogs come with us. Luna loves to run. I think she could run forever. She jumps and she glides and she cuts and barks and she’s happy. I'm grinning. Elias and I help each other over the fallen tree. Django goes under it. Elias and I place bets on which dog will get home first. Elias bets on Django and always wins. Luna loves the dirt too much to ever win. I’m thirteen. I was wrong. Luna can’t run forever. We walk East Rock Park with only Django. Sometimes he stops moving and Popop yells. He tries to scare him. But I know he's just sad. We go on the sailboat. Elias and I went to sailing camp. We feel pretty confident now. Popop is still better than us. He pulls the ropes and the boat moves like it's an extension of his mind. I want to control things that way...

TWO POEMS by FARYAL RASHID

October 2 2024

Facts are bigger in the dark! If you lie on the floor very straight the temperature(s) of all the pulses in the world coarse right through you
Suddenly the distinction between a loon and a regular becomes much less important
Lying down means you can read and understand the loon book
Slipknots and silk and
a pistol auto 9 mm fashioned out of unimaginative heavy metals
Stainless steel starting more than it can finish...

REBECCA by LAMB

September 27 2024

I come alive when she says her mom is dead. I stare at the green wine in my glass long enough to bead my eyes, then I meet hers and hit her with the perfect line.
What is her name?
Like I said, the perfect line, erasing every other guy she’s ever been with. Oh, are you sorry to hear that? Are you so sorry for her loss? I want to know her name. Not what it was but is. That I rarely get to use it, though more often than you’d think, makes it ultra perfect. After she gives me her mom’s name, I’ll hit her with the perfect follow up, the most wooing sound a woman knows, the sound of her own name.
But she doesn’t say her mom’s name. She cries, which I’m prepared for, then says something for which I’m not...

ASPIRATIONAL by ADELINE SWARTZENDRUBER

September 23 2024

My summer aspirational vibe is coming together quite nicely
on my Pinterest moodboard, but unfortunately I am running out of summer and running out of steam.
My summer aspirational vibe is
Lana Del Rey with cursive Nabokav Whitman tattoo
My summer aspirational vibe is
the Ginsberg and Bukowski in his bedroom, evidence of
an undergrad girl’s presence, it’s the ecstatic glimmer in virgin irises
scanning pages, Blake’s revelations, suddenly resolute
in the desire to write poems that work like music...

SCUT MONKEY MIDDLE by NICHOLAS WILDER FORMAN
September 19 2024

INT: BOTTOM LEFT CORNER

Everyone is three to ten years old but I’m the best at it. I think coyotes means grandma, I think coyotes are packs of grandmas that have grandkids that live out of state, so the coyotes that’s why,

that’s why
turns to the infinite morphs of my little brother
that’s why theyre in the backyard at night.
thas why i cant even fine bunny. Bunny gawn...

ICE BREAKER by MADLEN STAFFORD

September 11 2024
Every morning I drink water, from a glass jar, spiked with three spoonfuls of chia seeds. In bed, on the phone, soaking in the sunlight, my chia water spills on top of me. With my hands I spread the seeds thoroughly on my dress. With my hands. I leave my dress crumbled and wet on the edge of my bathroom sink. I won’t look at the dress for another day. When I do go back to clean the dress I will notice the seeds have sprouted little glowing roots. My heart is frozen. I will dampen my dress again, and shove it under the sink to the dim-lit corner...

I LOVE LIFE by SAM ROBINSON

September 9 2024
I was the hottest guy in the office, and I burned it all to the ground.

Now already, if you know me, you’d be calling me a liar. “But Sam,” you’d say, “you’re bald, you’ve been smoking since you were 16 and avoiding sunblock. You’ve got beady eyes, flesh-bony protrusions on the forehead from raising and furrowing your brows so much in quizzical self-satisfaction, a fucking cleft lip and palate, a facial birth defect, for Christ sakes. Not only that, but you’re just impotently complaining and venting your power fantasies...”

BOOF AUTOPORTRAIT by ISA LOCSIN and CORY VILLANUEVA

September 5 2024

i will keep pushing you until i have to go into witness protection. dark wooden furniture is better.

i wish there were panoramic screenshots. iridescent artificial fishing bait is just as enchanting to humans as it is to fish. you're an ashtray, i'm a machine. my love language is wearing a strip of masking tape around my wedding ring finger. i drink salt water in my room to feel closer to the ocean. loneliness is greed and i would never wish for that much. everything is funny. i have to realize spontaneously, i don't accept conscious contributions...