“Arlene never married Lars because some things are better left unsaid. He asked until the time for asking was over. She didn’t want anyone else, but she didn’t want him on her couch after 7:30 at night.”
FICTION | NONFICTION | POETRY |
TRANSLATION
SUBMIT STORE DONATE OPPORTUNITIES INTERVIEWS WRITERS WE PUBLISH
“Arlene never married Lars because some things are better left unsaid. He asked until the time for asking was over. She didn’t want anyone else, but she didn’t want him on her couch after 7:30 at night.”
Sunday morning, / he is hard / at worship / in the divine / church of golf. / His most / ardent prayer, / his heavenly gaze / comes down / to this tough putt / on the 7th green.
“I nod but I really don’t feel so good. I am cold through and through and when I look out the car window at the snow I see trees move when they do not. I am experiencing Death all around me and I cannot move.”
“Because I could not see what she saw, / I invented the burning city that gives no heat, / I planted the pillar of salt that is no resource, / And now, as their shadows wave at my feet, / I imagine the horrified look she gave / And salvage her look that has turned from me.”
But how to be in a world gone mad. / Not to be is easy. / Simply climb a willow tree, / reach for what you cannot have, / and fall from grace.
“It’s just half an hour, / it’s just a marriage, just a week’s worth of sex, it’s just / easier to move my thumb along the screen protector / like it’s tender, it’s just grief after grief after / your kid at a baseball game after grief after gif / after grief”
“We take turns, but Alison is a cat. She has a gray jumpsuit that she keeps for this purpose. In the video that we reenact, I am sitting on the couch with a glass of water watching a show. Alison is surreptitious and likes to take her time relaxing into her approach. When she is in her jumpsuit I know that she is not Alison, or even Alison playing the role of a cat. She is a cat.”
“Two girls among the green, between trees. Hands on hips, heads tipped back, eyes searching sky. Six years before Taylor Swift announced her eighth studio album by posting a photo of herself standing in a forest, she posted another photo of a forest holding two women, which she has since deleted from her grid. Don’t stress, it’s not gone. It’s just entered the next stage in the celebrity Instagram life cycle, which means that it’s truly ours now, property of the stans with the prescience to preserve.”
“the kingdom comes like a joke / told by a child, littered with /
what do you get and what happens now / and how many how many how many / like a game / of lost and found”
Epiphany: A Literary Journal welcomes you to an evening filled with drinks, light snacks, and a chance to connect with fellow writers, editors, and literary lovers. The night will feature readings from our talented contributors and words from our guest speaker Nadia Owusu, author of Aftershocks.
“When friends come over, I tell them the house shakes because it’s on a fault line. I don’t tell them the house is upset. I don’t tell them the trees tap the windows at night and the wind only blows at dinner time and the floor tilts upstairs, so Sis and I have to lean against the wall to get to our rooms. I don’t tell them Mom and Dad walk with their hands out like acrobats to get to their room.”
“‘Well, if you want someone to run in the primary, I’m your man!’ he exclaimed. ‘A man with no proper sense of himself—a man with nothing inside, who could therefore be all things to all people. Ahahahaha.’ He was moved to laughter by his own eloquence, by what he felt to be the truth and the transformative power of what he was saying, to the one person who could get it.”
“you ask me to be patient. i paint an old bookshelf
& remember my posture, the way blossoms become
one last thing.”
“There is often a bleakness that permeates Hebrew fiction, and certainly a much darker sense of humor, a lot of sarcasm and irony, as well as self-deprecation. These are less prevalent in most English writing…”
"My stories often start with some image or moment that stays with me... It could be something I experienced, or a conversation I overheard, or the way someone looked at someone else… I will usually just start writing toward that image or moment and build from there."
"I changed the channels. The news was on over and over. They were talking about that goddamned arsonist again. Someone had been setting crack houses on fire over in the black part of town. They had set another one just now. This made eight."
"If I were to even write it today, it would be a very different book. It might be better in some ways, but it would be probably less emotionally true to how I was feeling."
