Mike Piero, Ph.D. (he/him) is a bisexual writer and professor in Northeast Ohio, where he teaches courses in writing, literature, the humanities, and game studies. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in J Journal: New Writing on Justice, Moveable Type, and Oak Tree Journal and has recently won University of Michigan Press' Millions of Suns Writing Contest. He is seeking literary representation and a home for his debut novel, Rogue Burnout. He can be reached at www.mikepiero.org.
I traverse ages across orange-red tiles, ceramic, beautiful, rich in hue and tone and warmth, like a cathode ray tube shot from them to us and back again, my mind a buckshot mess of uncertainty. But tomorrow finds me with radium Brazil nuts voyaging through my veins, penetrating my weakened sinews, long since severed from their purpose, me, asleep, nearly… Read more →
Daybreak A gradual head-slide of oily dirt making its grand rounds, my hair keeps people at a comfortable distance, except for the other grease heads: downtrodden musicians dedicated to the grind, autistic gamers who excel in AP Calculus and Pokémon battles, the 3rd shift FedEx loader who stacks boxes like Tetris. My people, perhaps. For the most part though, I… Read more →
Slowly, they tell me, my dark-bark worries grow umbrella-like not unlike dragon blood trees that shade the elephantine deserts of my insecurities. Calm, calm—then: flames climb up wooden ivory towers in a flash, intensely, and then all burnt out. After the ashes smolder, and the forest of my sensoria turns to dragon blood tears, bodies labor motionless for hours, sometimes… Read more →
for Wark and Wittgenstein I have come to recognize my own long lost bodies hidden away from reach especially my feminine selves, wholly incomplete and abandoned but strong resilient and almost ready to play all the lost levels of public parity and pleasure always unsure though forever mourning the what ifs? and but whats? the fear of contempt and aversion,… Read more →
