Forum Magazine
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The Things You See
These are the things you see yet I remember: first, the animals in cages too small, littered with empty strawberry soda cans; then, the yellow cocoon of a puttering bus to Aden, …
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Who’s Counting
Written by: Rachael Scarborough Who’s Counting by Rachael Scarborough (poetry, accessible version)
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When Tadpoles Become Frogs
“How do they know, do you think?” she asked me. Water fell in streams from between her cupped hands as she squinted into her palms. We squatted beside the ditch, as we did every day on our way home from school, endlessly fascinated by this gurgling stream funneling down the ditch next to the road.…
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A Wicked on Rickety Road
Rickety Road, Lost County, Dakota Territory, 1888 There was a Gunslinger walking down Rickety Road. His limp swaying arms and unsteady gait gave him the appearance of a drunkard, although he did not stumble. Every now and then his pale, thin fingers twitched toward the scratched and grimy black revolvers at his sides, ready to…
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Skeletor
Skeletor had long wanted a body: to cover him, shield him, make him whole. He was only a skeleton. He was jealous of the other skeletons who had bodies. Sometimes, he would put clothes on and stuff them with pillows or crumpled up newspaper and stare in the mirror. He always put an extra pillow…
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Simplify
Circa 1956. Sometime in the predawn hours of the Cultural Revolution[1]. A black, red-flagged limo pulls up in front of the Chairman’s dacha in idyllic West Lake. A weary looking Minister of Culture, Hung, steps out of the car, and is ushered inside by the guards. He hands off his gloves and coat to the staff…
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Un Puño de Tierra
Acostumbrada está mi cuerpa de mujer a las muchas vejaciones, tantas ha sentido en cada uno de los días. Hoy amanecí en un tiradero. Mucho le pedí a él que la vida me dejara, tengo familia voy a la escuela me esperan en el trabajo, solo iba al cine y por un helado mis amigas…
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Prepping
where i’m from there’s a lake full of gold which is also a pond full of people & my pops my old man has taken to buying gold because it’s that or cryptocurrency that will be salvaged in the flood & people drowned in that pond men who never learned to swim striking out like…
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Abdication
At first I think of postage stamps and the faces of queens, immortalized in their black-and-white moment. The shades of the past are monochrome, marred only by some accidental fold, some streak of pale lightning. Pink roses blooming on the wallpaper of my bedside dresser. When I take this photo between my thumb and forefinger,…
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Colliery
At the MoMA there is a series of photos, black and white, Bernd and Hilla Becher who captured old steel mills, toppled tipples now destitute. My heart is a braitch hole, once full now excised of any valuables, cavernous drop through earth. Fingers pick me over, break away the slate from the good coal. Uniform…
Forum Literary Magazine 