In Conversation

Mister Joe’s Pirates by Karl Koweski (Roadside Press) Karl Koweski’s Mister Joe’s Pirates is an unapologetically profane, funny, and unexpectedly heartfelt novel that finds surprising humanity in the fading industrial landscape of Northwest Indiana. At first glance, it appears to be a crude comedy about washed-up barflies coaching a hopeless Little League team. By the …

Old Stories of a Young God In the Old Testament (so it says, & so they always say) God was a wrathful god a vengeful god a needy god, who demanded obedience demanded worship baiting & punishing with apple bobbing banishing & flooding killing the first born, bleeding rivers of blood, raining frogs & testing …

Another Broken Mirror I was told my style didn’t properly match. A row of girls whispered and giggled behind my back until a boy let me know I had blood on the back of my skirt. An elementary school gym teacher told all the girls to lie down on the floor and lift up our …

Chaos to the Fly 4 (the finale) 5. “I wouldn’t mind getting the Polish flag tattooed on my arm,” Vic allowed. “It’d give me something to point at if I’m ever caught out doing something stupid. Or maybe a Polish warbird, you know. Something that’ll warn a fella they’re messing with at least a third-generation …

One More Night, One More Beer Grant, a server I worked with a decade ago once said to me the restaurant business is the business of goodbye. We begin our goodbyes on our first day of every new job, as soon as we meet. Our bonds are sailors’ knots— tight as hell, but unravel easy. …

Two Jacks All ready, tailor-fit suit blending down, the colors as if separates paired just right. Hair cut fresh and tapered clean, like the fit below. Walking into the arena feels just a little too snug but nothing like his girl’s dress, a slinking gloss just to match him. A far memory shows a kid …

When Robots Fool Other Robots into Thinking They’re Not Robots I get these lucky streaks in my love life whenever Mercury goes retrograde. I hear it’s coming up and get excited, looking forward to my next romance. It happened again last week, and I started seeing the care nurse on a locked mental ward named …

while the homeless madman on the stalled D train at W 4th street wonders why his life is the way that it is we’ve been sitting here for ten minutes because of an incident at 34th street it’s always something in this city that makes you think the yokels who live somewhere else might be …

PLAYING GOD SO I CAN WATCH THE WORLD BURN I used to play SimCity on the library computer, tasked with designing my own miniature metropolis. The object was world prosperity inside a Macintosh screen, but it was more amusing to build things in a faulty manner: Skyscrapers toppled over, freeways ramps led cars over steep …

God is good all the time. Or not… Lot’s Wife – Turned to salt for a second glance. Seems a bit severe. Lot himself – Now no wife. Don’t blame Lot. Blame the All-Mighty. Everyone not on Noah’s Ark. Drowned. How is that fair? The Drowned had neither fins, gills, nor guardian Angels, Or Heaven …