Short, Fast, and Deadly

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Things That Come Up in Conversation

Maeve says, So you want to be a social worker. I nod, trying not to stare at the zit growing under her eye. She says, I have a social worker. She says, My dad threw my sister against a wall. She smooths her hair. I step backwards. Then forwards again.

by Jami Nakamura Lin of Chicago

July, Midday

the sky is a frying pan.
My brain feels like pus melting in gauze,
but I think better this way

by Jillian Niler of Chicago

I Bet That You're, Like, Totally Secure

your desperation 
reeks of microwaved feces 
and curry powder

smear it on your mirror

taint your reflection

by Maxwell Baumbach of Elmhurst

Anthologized

rip out my
   appendix
let the juices spill onto the
   table of contents
 
turn to
the nativity scene:
page 1
 
by Maxwell Baumbach of Elmhurst

Word Woes.

Damn.
Used to express brash attraction or allure
A compliment to the ultimate diss

Fail.
An easy way to say, "You are unbelievably dumb and I don't desire to waste more than one word to declare it."

Epic.
A word used when all others cease to describe the sheer greatness of a performed feat

Will the dissection of words entice you to break the bonds of drab culture & seek a new plethora of dynamic utterances?
 
Word.

by Hannah Virginia of Chicago

Love

your spoon
my guts
together forever
 
by Maxwell Baumbach of Elmhurst

Sweet Disasters of our Prophetic Youth

We stuck armymen's plastic bases into sandbox battlefields and burned them into green and tan casualties with your daddy's bic lighter.
 
by George T. Mormann of Joliet

What's Good for You Kills Me

"Hey, can I get a reading," she asks on the phone.

"No," I say, "You told me that’s not a part of your world anymore."

"Just one card," she says, needing something besides fortune-telling.

"Fine," I say.  I draw one card for her on my bedspread where I think about her every night.

"Death," I say, "Transition. Keep yourself healthy. Get ready for change."

"Thanks," she says, "I’m moving. Didn’t know how else to tell you."
 
by Eric Kenron of Chicago

don't call this tenderness

because I don't think you noticed
the blisters on my heels
as you pinned them back
against your shoulders.
 
by Stevie Edwards of Chicago

Pigeon (still life with, atop stuffed gorilla)

Upon this red rock. Change.
Yield two birds, one shoebox.
Yield mammal. Reduce. Yield mammaltrash.
I don’t know your name.
 
by Megan Boatright of Chicago

American Haiku Love Poem for a Sonnet / English to French Translation / A Letter to The Editor

I was plucking yew when middles were rare digits just in spite of you.

by Nicolas James Hampton of Chicago

Normal, Illinois

April said something about silos, how the low tide
clouds kept casting purple shadows from free will of
the Sunday dresses we used to wear.

by Maureen Foody of Chicago