In Conversation

  What If I Just Never Got Political? Until a couple days ago, I didn’t know who the hell Charlie Kirk even was. Being a white, male American of decidedly bad ass Polish stock, I have the luxury of ignoring the completely batshit crazy situations trending on the six o’clock news. Fortunately, I have an …

it’s Monday morning my ass is sore & I KNOW why I didn’t know then but I know now. I can’t believe it’s not butter. Gee your hair smells terrific. All I ever wanted to be was Bobby’s girl but it was never my party my prom my sock hop my goddamn cotillion. I wasn’t …

Civil War I stare out the window in a fog created by the war of hormones fighting for purchase in my body. The neighbors fence fell down several months ago in a bad storm, now it sits like a crooked gap between the teeth of well groomed yards. They have made no attempt to fix …

Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner Being here night after endless night watching the moon change phases within the dead eyes of the drinkers thinking of the loneliness of the boundless track that spins by in my head as I run from place to place ringing sales touching bottles rinsing glasses making drinks as if I …

BODIES INSIDE BODIES The job started at 6AM so I needed to be up at 5 to shower and shave and make the commute to the aluminum shed where we decided which tools to pack. It was a landscaping gig and we sweated all day endlessly bending to the grass then reaching for the trees …

Prisoner of the Whipping Boy’s Light Box I fell in love with my friend He trapped me in his little light box He fed me crumbs of camaraderie He spun tales into a pacifying blanket Dropped in little pellets of Hope and romance And then he got bored Found something better In the overworld of …

With Her Hair on Fire by Christy Prahl (Roadside Press, 2025) Christy Prahl’s With Her Hair on Fire is a collection of prose poems that read like dispatches from the liminal zones between memory and invention, confession and fable. The chapbook brims with domestic detail—laundromats, hibiscus bushes, yellow houses, hummingbird feeders—yet each poem veers quickly …

Sons and Fathers My son is nine weeks into his Hydra experience, working beside me in the chrome shop, plating components which will eventually become hydraulic cylinders used on an array of dump trucks, garbage trucks, cranes, and tractors. Nine weeks without missing a day of work, without so much as a single instance of …

Most Likely To Recede PBS PSA: when you grow up learnin’ songs such as The B-I-B-L-E yes that’s the book for me and if The Devil Doesn’t Like it He Can Sit On A Tack (OUCH!) it’s unlikely you’ll become a Rhodes scholar, let alone America’s Next Top Model. Cheated from the start. I’m still …

In Joliet In Joliet, I lost a lot of money, first in the bowling alley with my cousin, then in the casino. My cousin can bowl. Bowl and hustle. “Your own flesh and blood?” I said. “Why not?” he said and took a fifty off me. At the casino, we met these girls, a bachelorette …