Volume 7, Issue 3
PROSE - FICTITIOUS NON-FICTION
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(There is the sound of throat clearing)
AK – (continuing) Mr Pirage is indeed an unexceptional man to look at, in that he has no particular feature that draws the attention, though he does have a fine moustache. No, dear listener, what has caused Mr Pirage the many problems he has been facing is his resolve to keep small segments of fruit, sometimes berries, sometimes, like today, segments of satsumas, up his nostrils. Mr Pirage, why? MP – I feel so much better with something up my nostrils. It’s something I discovered last year when I got back from work one evening and picked some berries from a Rowan tree outside our front door. I can’t think what made me do it, but I placed them in my nostrils and immediately felt better. [READ FULL WORK] |
POETRY
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...to venture forth this morning
in a state of dishabille, daedalean perhaps yet disabused as a dandelion of all deadlines, to divest yourself of obligations unseemly and seedy as slumlord or sweatshop and to hear the cacophony of traffic and neighbors at loggerheads silenced; to find the stench of fast-food dissipated, the grisly pneumatic percussives of the corner automotive muffled; [READ FULL WORK]
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PROSE POETRY
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Meanwhile, the dog star rages. My Merkel’s discs stand at rapt attention. Shall we dine al fresco? This bear trap once belonged to Friedrich Hegel; now it belongs to the bear. Some say that the mythological imagination is in remission; I say that the idee fixe is on vacation. Gestalt theory teaches us that some “top-down processing” is inevitable, so help yourself to these faux roses--and please be patient! We are working toward a more scientific alphabet.
Last Tuesday, the Yes Man manifested at our front door, carrying a suitcase full of lip balm. He said, “I sense a vague dissatisfaction gnawing at our utterances. Perhaps we should recite some litanies to reduce the swelling. But would doing so cure the moon itch plaguing us all?” By this time, he’d gotten a foot inside the door and begun to open his suitcase. “This lip balm is laced with calming pheromones—it’s our only hope! Say, is that aspic I smell?” Mother smiled. She took him by the hand. Together, they went upstairs, while Father mounted another jackalope head to the wall. [READ FULL WORK] |
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So runs the maxim
never evacuate where you masticate, but we have long since run afoul of our mandate: having occupied and fouled, at an exponential clip, every holt and heath, every combe and cliff. [READ FULL WORK] |
Customized illustrations for all published pieces provided by Evgenia Barsheva.