Theme 03: “Vice”
Skull Fuck Your Darlings
by Patrick Johnston
“Lodging files / In Black and White / Marlboro Reds / Red Drapes / Blue Velvet / Nitrous Oxide / Caffeine / And Nicotine Trifecta…”
Dead Cat Bounce
Poetry by Damon Hubbs
“…he looks like he’s wearing a Life-preserver / as if the great flood is imminent and he’s prepared / because when the unicorn crosses the stream, god damn it, he’ll be ready.”
Plaza del Sol
Fiction by Julian Gallo
“He can’t imagine how such a young woman would find a man his age so attractive? She hardly knows him. What is she thinking?”
A Path Through the Dandelions
Fiction by Hank Kirton
“Lying in a puddle of purple vomit, Lottie von Scrodd interviews herself as if she is a guest on a highbrow PBS talk show.”
Don’t Read This
CNF by William Carter
“Often, I worry you are going to turn up dead. It’s going to be the middle of the night or the early morning, and Dad is going to tell me through tears that you overdosed or made the wrong people mad…”
Seeing a Bottle of Woodford Reserve at the Grocery
Poetry by Colleen Harris
“Soil gets beneath / fingernails, and fingernails / dug into his back over muscle / leaving tiny sicklemarks where / an angel’s wings would have / grown…”
Tasty Pear
Poetry by Allan Lake
“She takes comfort / in ‘the meaning’ / whereas I delight / in meaninglessness.”
Breakfast Machine
by Scott C. Holstad
“…she walked out the door / leaving me filled with awe / and lust and just a little / hankering for more.”
Here at the Track
Poetry by Benjamin Kirby
“But the race runs hot and fast and you can almost lose yourself in the heat of it / While your little sister ignores her flat chicken nuggets and you drink a purple Gatorade…”
Four Poems
Poetry by Keith Dodson
“Anger woke me up-- / alcohol passed me out…”
Forget the Hollywood
Poetry by Pawel Grajnert
“Simulated / fellatio will do for / The ready-to-blow.”
Mapplethorpe
Poetry by Krystle Eilen
“a princely pauper / whose aspect reflects that of / a parched orchid culled / too soon.”
Five Poems
Poetry by Keith Melton
“Then another cup-- / The dun treasuries of mother’s milk / Sweetened first in lust / To snarl at the demons in morning’s lingering protocol.”
Channels
Poetry by Jason Haaf
“I have the ability to abstain from vices and pleasure, perhaps longer than others./ I can also dive straight into them, swim in them, wondering if I'll eventually drown... “
Eyes Closed
Fiction by Alexis MacIsaac
“Jade looks even more desperate than me to hold onto the night, and I think of Olivia, if Olivia is just more honest about her fears than us, and it’s her honesty that we find repellant.”
Essential Workers
Fiction by John Byutorie
“We walked past the empty beauty products …the only products still on shelves being the newly marketed NeauSkin that rolled out a few months ago alongside a robust marketing scheme complete with cardboard cutout of Reese Witherspoon in deadface…”
Seven Poems
Poetry by Craig Kirchner
“It was never part of the original plan / that going to settlement / would save my life, save me / from drinking myself to the drought…”
Three Poems
Poetry by Brandon Marlon
“…by the dessert table loiters a man of appetites, / prone to fondling a woman with one hand / and a pastry with the other.”
Three Poems
by Alex M. Frankel
“…Negative on PrEP. / Talk to me if you have a face. Must have prior knowledge regarding the acronym FTM. Kinky = Complete turn off and will get no reply….?
Define for Me: Aromantic
CNF by Quinn Dankesreiter
“Scrunch your nose as you remember how the sweat pools down their back in missionary. Inform me that it makes it hard to grab their ass.”