My lover circles my areola like he’s an astronaut and I’m a crater on the moon. I’m half expecting him to stick an American flag in my side. He strikes a wicked grin and tells me that the sleazy college bar, Wetland, is advertising a T-shirt contest with a new twist. This wet one is […]
Issue 71
Jessica Anthony: MS. BIONIC MEETS MR. IRONIC
On the morning of his twenty-ninth birthday, Michael Marcone lay naked on his plaid and woolly ottoman with one leg propped on the cushions, the other hanging off the edge in a listless and altogether unattractive manner. He stared at his knuckly toes which seemed, he thought, to grow more hirsute with every passing day. […]
Matthew Longabucco: In the PBQ Archives
The question of the archive is not a question of the past. It is not the question of a concept dealing with the past that might already be at our disposal. An archivable concept of the archive. It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, […]
Ryan Sloan: M and the Artful Lie
I do not have a sister. Her name is Mariana. In truth, I can’t remember her name, but I’ve given her this one, and it sounds like a name she would want. Mariana is thirty-three years old. She lives on the Upper West Side in Manhattan . She’s a successful architect. Her mother was Portuguese. […]
Giant Traumatism: After Guillaume Apollinaire
The carpet fades from red to green From bottom to top in the invisible metropolis Dignitaries whistle their pitiless speeches Surgery’s massive reductions Paul sweeping leaves from his side of the driveway There is a message to be written on the changing of the season From carriage to pumpkin, Cinderella had her fun Small contaminant […]
Jason Schneidermann: SUBLIMATION POINT for M.B.
The answer is entropy?how smell works? little bits of everything?always spinning off from where they were?flying off at random into the world?which is to say into air. There are other ways of solid to gas? they’re substance specific, like iodine, or dry ice?how I felt when I saw you? straight to a new state without […]