A woman had discovered
herself in an epic sense
conquered land.

Arriving home in hunger, with thirst,
her house disagreeably con-
fined her.

This thought pricked:
Must I dwell in a musty dull place?

On the day the eviction notice was stapled to the front door Doris waited for the dusty Buick to pull out of the gravel driveway before going to wake Arnie in the back den. The morning light streamed in through the hall as she nervously wrung a thin kitchen towel in her hands. She paused outside of the bathroom and waited for one of the boys to finish up.

"Go wake your brothers," she said to the oldest, Isaac.

"Awe, Ma, no way. We all sleepin' in today. You know we ain't get back to the house until two."

Tim couldn't remember the first time he saw her severed head. He thought he was hallucinating. He'd been working long hours at the Opera. He made a phone call to his internist, who recommended an extended break from rehearsals, and prescribed various pills for nerves. Tim did as he was told. None of that worked. He continued to see Alice’s severed head.

let’s talk about it in the morning by K Raydo

The HAND FELL back into the sink when Marie disentangled her own fingers from it. She held it up to the sunlight beaming through the window: a clean human hand, with immaculately manicured fingernails, severed precisely at the wrist.
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Sometimes I Like to Google Things Just to Make Sure No One Is Thinking What I’m Thinking.

Most good conversations start out with, ‘hey, man, wanna see a pair of big tits?’ and if you’re a person who generally likes ‘big tits’ or ‘tits’ or ‘anything’ then you’ll probably say, ‘hell ya, I wanna see a pair of big tits. What do I look like a fucking loser?’

I saw this guy on the street and he was playing the trumpet and he had a top hat out and he was looking for ‘tips’ or ‘food money’ or ‘beer money.’ He was really jamming out and he looked like an uncle. The kind of uncle who's lanky and generally comes underdressed to family events and trips over everyone because he's already seven shots deep and no one knows how he got there because his license has been suspended and no one gave him a ride and there’s no way he took the bus because it’s not on a bus line and there’s no way he took a taxi because it’s a long story why he can’t take a taxi.

Brought to you by lack of coordination, the inimitable bloody nose!
And what’s more beautiful than blood in streetlight? Two symmetrical
drops like a bisected heart, red and wet as lips after a first kiss.
The farther one gets from one’s first kiss—farther, because the distance
between kisses can be measured in kisses—the closer one gets
to one’s next kiss. This is the truth of kissing. And also of bleeding.
The nose often intrudes on kisses, becoming entangled in the nostrils
of the other person, or worse yet, it smushes against a cheek, forcing
a sinus to drain, a trickle down the back of the throat that causes
the tongue to retreat a bit, a muffled gag. Once, a man, caught in the
ecstasy of a convenience store scratch-off, slammed his face on the counter.
The clerk took the man’s face in both hands as if to examine the damage
but slammed her mouth against his. The moment turned into something
of a transfusion, and they knew what each other smelled like at birth.

At night I dream of peacocks and butterflies and other divine creatures.

I fell in love with Phantasmagoria more than half a century ago and took her home with me; bathed, dressed, and adopted her for eternity, a cosmic breath.

My dream baby does not exist and yet she is real. Her name is Phantasmagoria.

She is the flow of turquoise at sunrise in the spring on the cool lake in Chimera.

I found her in an ancient book of secrets in the Library of Infinity. Was she inside the magical dictionary with no beginning or end?

Sweet Phantasmagoria tastes like hot apple pie with whipped cream on a sultry summer day. A zephyr brushes against my olive face.

The hand fell back into the sink when Marie disentangled her own fingers from it. She held it up to the sunlight beaming through the window: a clean human hand, with immaculately manicured fingernails, severed precisely at the wrist.

Picked Me a Plum by Ben Rader

THE lady at the door takes one look at Cal and puffs out her body like a blowfish. She’s got on white leather pants; an earth colored blouse and a buttery scarf around her neck—over all of that is a royal blue robe, flowing, with little lines of white dashing down the front. As her body inflates, grows wider and wider, the little white lines grow into big, fat exclamation points without the points.
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What was
on only disturbed me more than the
static
White, black and grey static-muffled murmurs
The faces I saw that screamed in ALLCAPs
While a ghost pulled puppet strings

we kiss in the middle of a bird storm

i feel like the heaviest whale pressed into the surface of a colorless frozen lake which our big wet bodies splinter like bones

i shake branches out of your sheets and write inside your mouth about ghosts snapchatting each other pictures of a bird mummuration

sparrows eating fast-food salads with their plastic forks

At first light the sun plays with us in a once veiled sky with luminous
sea birds swallowing glances from the green waters,
along feathered winds sweeping the white sand
to uncover shadowy roses for our vase rescued from war

My daughter, Sally, calls me Daddy. She's twenty-six years old and still calls me Daddy. I do not encourage it; I do not egg her on by buying those necklaces or bracelets that say Daddy’s Little Girl. I know it's nothing I should let bother me but I can't help it: she's a grown woman. Living in her own apartment with a boyfriend; a solid job—a dog. She has a dog. I suppose I never thought about this sort of thing before I had a daughter. I'd hear adult women, whether in real life, or on television, call their fathers Daddy. But it never bothered me like it does when my own daughter does it. My wife, Lindsey,—her own father died when she was still young—she says it's hard for her to say whether she wouldn't have still been calling him Daddy well into her adult years. But then, she's just trying to make me feel better while also not betraying, in some subtle, weird way, her daughter. To tease me Lindsey'll sometimes say “Hi, Daddy” when she answers my calls. No, I don't think it's some terrible quirk to feel strange when your adult daughter is still calling you Daddy when you've told her, how “You feel strange when she does it,” and, also, “Could she please stop?” The terrible thing would be to tell her how loathsome it is to me. I have a dream where my daughter is very little; little as a doll, her face a small white thing in my hands. And she’s speaking gibberish, like she’s reading a machine manual; it’s very robotic; I feel scared and confused. I have another where she's fallen, skinned her knee and come into the house, bleeding across the kitchen floor, her bare feet not making a sound, saying, “Fix me, fucker.” And last night I dreamed she was calling her boyfriend Daddy. She was at the window, telling him to come look, come look. And when he came, it was me: he was me. And in the dream my daughter was just standing there, her thin arms stretched out, into what seemed like infinity, reaching for me, going: “I love you, Daddy. I love you.”

The lady at the door takes one look at Cal and puffs out her body like a blowfish. She’s got on white leather pants; an earth colored blouse and a buttery scarf around her neck—over all of that is a royal blue robe, flowing, with little lines of white dashing down the front. As her body inflates, grows wider and wider, the little white lines grow into big, fat exclamation points without the points.