As Andrea Abi-Karam wrote in their book Villainy, “I WANT A BETTER APOCALYPSE THIS ONE SUCKS.” Everywhere there is the proliferation of work and labour (which are not the same) and their dissolution too; capital encroaches, demands, regurgitates. It offers little in return to most and too much to a few. How does it feel,…
Category: Issue Twelve
CIGARETTE GIRL
by Zoey Greenwald Kathy Acker, New York City in 1979:All the poor people who’re making this club fashionable so the rich want to hang out here, even though the poor never make a buck off the rich pleasure, are sitting on cars, watching rich people walk into the club. Anyway. Tonight at the club I’m…
Murkiness in the West
by Justin Davis “This the American black man knows: his fight here is a fight to the finish. Either he dies or wins….There can be no compromise. This is the last great battle of the West.” —W.E.B. Du Bois The West is where the sun takes our value each night. I learned this from my…
Two Poems
by Asa Drake Listening to the Storm, Still Distant vs. Specific Rain on the Banana Leaves I bring jam to share at work after an exit interview in which a colleague calls me robotic, unbelievably kind. I imagine that at an impressionable age she watched Blade Runner or Cloud Atlas or Ghost in the Shell…
WHAT DO YOU DO OUTSIDE OF WORK?
by Stephanie Kaylor it’s the first summer in nearly ten years I do not have to spend nearly every night alone alone, as in, with the fathers, with the doctors, with the husbands who do not know my name, alone, as in Stephanie does not exist except…
Ghostwriter
by Trevor KS In the arbitrarily Resuscitated, Beatific Fructose Of the early 21st century, I am Employable Because I manage To be nobody In particular. I took out student Loans to pay for my Student loans. I’ll take Any shampoo That can make A man out of me. In nobody’s shopping -Cart throat, the throat Pitches: it’s Pride Month, it’s pets. Rainbow dog collars on Sale…
Roost
by Eva Rosenfeld Mr. Antoine worked in newspaper distribution. He was so mumbly and cryptic whenever he passed me in the hallway, often wearing a hat with large woolen ear flaps, that I was envious in an almost fiery way when I saw him talking to the FedEx deliveryman at length. Those two men. They…