What the English Teacher Learns
The new girl asked for scissors How was I to know? Someone reported a pool of blood Coming from the bathroom stall *** The American Psychological Association tells us more people self-injure than we think. The white teen female is the face of deliberate self-inflicted injury, but almost half of all cutters are male. Race, economic status, and culture… Read more →
How To Change The Past
Nine Lives: A Story of My Father, My Cat, and of Us All
The day before my father passed away recently, one of my two cats disappeared. I adopted her and her brother from the humane society last August, when both were about three months old. They were homeless but fortunate animals, their cuteness, eliciting human kindness. The sister and brother came in different colors, not birds of the same feather. One would… Read more →
Jaina Cipriano (a slideshow)
self ghost introduction
the worldbuilding is three stories Yongin pours rain sheets stained American on the enclosed balcony laundry hums a painting Western oils outside Korean brush indoors
Desiderium
After the funeral, I dipped out of my deadend street. I crisped in the glow of lawns buzz cut to the soil’s fur. As I spilled into the city veinsof weathered tar, I saw a cherried cig unfurling in the windy mouth of an intersection, but it was flamesof frayed wings as I trolled closer. I braked in flumes of… Read more →
Energy Processing is a Characteristic of Life
Every morning my partner eats a palmful of medication one hour before breakfast, then gazes into her empty coffee cup, forecasting, her body tricked into believing her thyroid exists, the emptiness of her belly aiding absorption. Potted cat grass grows on our apartment windowsill overlooking the dead lunar landscape of December in Maine. The cat grass photosynthesizes winter sunlight, weak… Read more →
An hour before sunset
Grumbling arrives as we workshop creative ideas in a volatile space. Better to cluster, align. Like a starling finding its place in an erratic sky dance that disrupts boredom and desire. We assimilate, murmurate. But if the near-dark sky calls, perhaps today a single bird can change the course and the dance, and maybe the wind itself will follow.
Doikayt
n. Hereness. n. Diaspora n. “the Yiddish concept… used to describe practices of political organizing and cultural activismamong Yiddishists and Jewish socialists especially during the interwar period.” Hershberg, from the German, meaning “deer hill”or “dear hill”, depending on animism’s sweetness.Moved eastward, sloped downward phoneticallyto Gershberg: Odessa, Baku, Syktyvkar, Brighton Beach. And the Auerbachs: St. Petersburg, Tarnow,Warsaw, Berlin, Krakow, Rzedzin, Plaszow,[Oswiecem], Toulouse, Haifa…. Read more →