Spring 2020
-
50 Love Letters
Cast of Characters JANA An older professional woman SISSY A young woman, probably a college student SAM A hippie looking young man MADDY A middle-aged woman Setting: The N Judah Muni train in San Francisco. Time: Present At Rise: JANA has been sitting on the train for a while holding a shoebox tied with a…
-
The Body of Stone
The island had been declared “surplus federal property” for five years, the legal way of saying it had been hollowed out and deserted of soul. The government had spent years trying to keep its “worst of the worst” inside. But when we returned as the island’s rightful owners, the same government wanted to keep us…
-
Escape Artist
The moon was an escape and a trap. My life is this way; frying pans to fires to frying pans. I shook a frying pan full of eggs over the burner. Rick, who lit his cigarettes from the stove, pushed me aside, leaned down, blond hair hanging over the flame. He singed a few hairs…
-
Unscheduled Stops
Click. Click. Gear shift. Gear shift. Entering Seattle City Limits. It was 2:59AM. Inside a 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse, a passenger was staring out at the steel and asphalt of I-5 glimmering with the remainder of what had been torrential rain. Often, this section was snarled with traffic, but the streets were empty, and the…
-
The Prophet
When I met him, I thought Larry was my dream guy. He was intense and intellectual, and he wasn’t very tall, but I could get past that. I could get past a lot of things about Larry, from his attitude toward wait staff—impatient—to his taste in clothes—lacking—and even to his penis size—underwhelming. What I liked…
-
Getting Fragonard’s Goat
A cabinet painting, measuring only 12″ by 7″ in Gallery 7 of the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, is half the size of a neighboring Watteau (1684-1721). The artist, 38-year-old Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), was Watteau’s true successor as a specialist in romantic comedy. Both artists exemplify the French Rococo’s appetite for…
-
#TheGreatConspirator
The hall is dark. The mood is blissful. My breathing is natural. Relaxed. In community with 49 others, my body is gleaming, serene. Glowing. Suddenly my mind veers off. My thoughts race back to Trump’s remarks earlier today during his celebratory speech—the day after his impeachment acquittal—flaming, toxic, hazardous. Vile. Only the tranquil voice of…
-
D minor
It plays who, when, where I am. Maybe why. They call it being in your “late teens.” As if your adulthood were somehow hurrying to arrive, to get past the protected pop songs of childhood and into something serious. I’m in my late teens, in the evening, late in the year, which means it’s already…
-
Myrtle Avenue Dirt
Thanks for sending me back to all that is fresh, where I can still see it and smell it and feel it across these scores of years. As you read me, as you hear me, do I hold your hand, and are we seven years old again? See: that’s me, the chubby kid with the…
-
Calluses
That boat had been my home for going on four months. I lived, breathed, ate, slept, smoked, drank, waxed, waned, loved, and hated on that boat. My mother has told me, “you’ll never go home again,” a phrase that always bothered me, but this phrase had fallen flat as this boat was the one home…
Forum Literary Magazine 