TABLE OF DISCONTENTS by Russell Streur

Posted by CS on

Offering 55 is now available: Table of Discontents by Russell Streur.

 

TABLE OF DISCONTENTS #21

DNA testing
Grief and fury
A continuous loop
Ceaseless violence
A rock and no place
Denial of the genocide
Records are sealed
A dark film
Deadlock

“They will come get me now,”
the man outside the café said.
“They will torture me and I will disappear.”

Information leak
Ordinary business.

ill of i by Joseph A. W. Quintela

Posted by CS on

Offering 53 is now available: ill of i by Joseph A. W. Quintela.

 

On Becoming Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway said she would
love walking in London, said Mrs. Dalloway, really it’s better than
being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore, this being
the violent explosion which made Mrs. Dalloway.
Mrs. Dalloway, coming to the window with her arms full of [       ]
Mrs. Dalloway, coming out of [       ]
Mrs. Dalloway, raised her hand to her eyes and
taking Mrs. Dalloway’s parasol, handled it like a sacred weapon.
In came Mrs. Dalloway.
But, said Mrs. Dalloway, she had enough.
Oh, thank you, said Mrs. Dalloway, and thank you, thank you, she went on.
Mrs. Dalloway will see me, said the elderly man in the hall.
Who can — what can, asked Mrs. Dalloway (thinking it was outrageous to be
Mrs. Dalloway, who seldom met, and appeared when they did meet indifferent)
But Mrs. Dalloway had
been in a factory; behind a counter; Mrs. Dalloway and all the
hatred of Mrs. Dalloway. This grudge against the world, she thought,
did not hate Mrs. Dalloway.
Mrs. Dalloway said,
She despised Mrs. Dalloway from the bottom of her heart.
Mrs. Dalloway had triumphed,
had impressed Mrs. Dalloway (she could not get the thought
up), one by one, Mrs. Dalloway walking last and almost always
felt that Mrs. Dalloway was far the best of the
movies — when Mrs. Dalloway came
late (dear Mrs. Dalloway, we hardly dared to come),
drawing Mrs. Dalloway into the [       ].

HEART PIE by David Mac

Posted by CS on

Offering 52 is now available: Heart Pie by David Mac.

 

Mascara

 

beetles in your boudoir belch from your black liquid eyes

your heart’s a grey ashtray the shape of a skull

 

I have come here again with my bouquet of wilting flowers

I have come to lovingly break your neck

 

and you can hardly believe the words hissing from my mouthpiece

they are not the ones you expected

 

so, as I cross the room to find a vase, all that separates us is

the sound of tears from your eyes, and poison from mine

 

 

- previously appeared in Purple Patch