Home All Summer
a suburban treasure left to die
August 2022
What is the angle of the force
the sun sends you an electric field
the other planets send you an electric field
I, in my house, send you an electric field /
fence high
more negative
thas true
oh thats nature
but you dont know because you live in a city
if you live bethel
thats a lightning
cherry
river
junebug
going in
dry
by Hieu Nguyen
Hieu Nguyen is a student and writer living in New York City. @grandaddysupreme (instagram)
Huntington
I lived for a suburban porch like this, the boys getting drunk on Modela. The night humid and not too cold, I was numb and tense, kept taking drags off my boyfriend’s cigarette, raking my tongue over my teeth. I watched N cut lines for us, fat white caterpillars, his hand butterflying over an Elton John CD. When we were done, we fed the silver disc into the boom box. None of the boys were clean-shaven, cradling the necks of their bottles, green curves resembling the shapes of bodies. I was folded in half in a porch chair, saucers for eyes, in love with the evening, the Japanese Maple softened red by the moon. In love with my boyfriend’s ankles, his black socks, his slippers. He was sipping his beer and adjusting his pockets. I watched him sit down and get up and sit down again. The clear pond of his eyes. In them, I could count every Sunday morning, always the sounds of someone moving furniture upstairs.
by Chloe Blog
Chloe Marisa Blog (she/her) is a writer, bookseller, and educator from Huntington, New York. She received her MFA in poetry from New York University. Her poems have been featured at Fecund Magazine, Seventh Wave Magazine, Bad Pony Magazine, among others. Her poetry touches on themes of desire, obsession, and the strange horror of growing up in the American suburbs. @chloeblog (instagram).
Special
hemmed & frayed
sipping coffee
in a big red car
by the corn field
Hold my face
hold it in your hands
and say:
Special
yours recalls
somewhere sacred
early 2000s mall
escalators winding
slow over fountains
glass elevators
jutting nowhere
Special
well, here we are so
take me in the back
where they keep
things refrigerated
little cornichons,
ingredients for the
Special
get this
I think
I’ve got it down:
wandering is luck
Luck is hard red nails
tapping on a tabletop
counters are slippery
where they shouldn’t be
perversions take place
at the end of a sentence
or in bright white sheets
by Christina Svenson
Christina Svenson is a poet from Panama living in Oakland, California. @angelbyshaggy (instagram)
Cul-de-sac The term Cul-de-sac means dead end. No through road. No Exit. It derives from the term derivitculum, meaning ‘an abnormal pouch or sac opening from a hollow organ.’ From the Latin Culus, bottom, or bottom of a sack. By these standards, if the neighborhood is a living organism, then the cul-de-sac is an abnormal growth. The cul-de-sac has a fine skin of freshly cut grass. It has been said that the cul-de-sac is “a suburban treasure left to die.” The cul-de-sac embodies a period more than a comma. An ending to a thought. Something you circle around on a bicycle in the heat of an afternoon. by Chloe Blog *originally published in Fecund Mag*
I’m Writing to You from Glendale, CA When the day comes you will Kiss the ground you will Say “thank God!” All your moments of callousness Will soften into feelings of tenderness. Remember when you wanted to Inflict pain onto others and Dredging in the same ugly waters but no more. Now we’re dancing in love you will Say “thank God!” by Ani Tatintsyan
Ani Tatintsyan is an Armenian-American writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles.
what’s a mnemonic device
what’s a mnemonic device
for remembering people love you
that mistakes are broken currency
formed in dust bunnies under the bed
and most times when people say
“you have an eyelash, make a wish”
it is actually an eyebrow hair
and
would it count just the same?
by Christina Svenson
Self Portrait
If I could have kept anything
it would have been his whiskey scent, the whole month
ripe and yellow as a banana, something
I could devour fast in this 96-degree heat. Now I watch
as the pink moon on the cactus rots,
how its shadow is tangled on the windowsill.
O what am I? Today slanted with an apology.
I told no one, pressed the season to the satin pillow.
If only I liked myself while sitting down.
The mirror, the way
my face leaks out of it and into me.
by Chloe Blog
