—for AM Mariam
Your thick thighs. Your full waist.
Your bright eyes. Your round face.—
That you walk around the streets,
Unashamed of the penetrating eyes,
Unafraid of words that hit hard as punch
To Go Wading by Louise Mather
Colossus vessels gazing without oars
over green-lit stencilled exiles
further from the sun
the cliff’s furrow
crowns birthing rockpools
nests of salt prisms
willow tendrils and hammered jade florets
struck with kindling and dew
Irving Townsend FSA by Steve Legomsky
Irv and Stan are actuaries and colleagues. They perform their labor at the home office of the James Hickok Mutual Life Assurance Company, located on Berkeley Street in Boston’s charming Back Bay area.
One evening, Irv had an inspiration, which he shared the next day with Stan. “There are a million TV shows about doctors and lawyers. It’s high time for a TV show about an actuary. So here’s my idea: Together, we write a script for a pilot episode. We have an in. I think you’ve met my sister-in-law Gerty. She’s a producer with CBS. What do you think?”
Hubble, Bubble, Toilet Trouble by Michael Bloor
The allotments are a sociable place, especially for me because my plot is right next to the entrance. So I get to greet, and chat to, everyone coming through the gates. The conversations are kindly and cheerful, except when the subject is pigeons or cabbage root fly. So, when I greeted Billy Epps on his return from his holidays (Morecombe – two weeks), I was utterly unprepared for his bitter response:
‘Eh? How am I? How am I?? I’ll tell you how I am: I haven’t had a crap for four days!’
Our TMNT Pizza Party by Shawn Berman
It’s our first night together as a couple in Brooklyn and you’re belting out the theme song to the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Till this day, it’s probably hands down our favorite TMNT film to be made—not that crappy Michael Bay-produced rebooted one where the turtles don’t even look like turtles but more like creatures from a drunken nightmare that you can’t wake up from.
Even though you only know the very beginning of the theme song–heroes in a half shell turtle powerrrr—it doesn’t bother me. Not one bit. In fact, I find it kinda funny and join along, making sure to harmonize with your off-key vocals, mostly because I don’t want to disrupt the radness of the moment since I know these moments don’t come too often these days ever since we both got grownup jobs in the city making it that much harder to find time for one another. Still—we try.
Red Pepper Dare by Jasmina Kuenzli
“Your coworker seems to be upset about something. What do you do?”
It was a rainy day, and the two of us were sitting in the office, stewing in an awkward silence.
I don’t remember who was there with us. Just like I don’t remember if it was summer or fall. I think that it was raining outside the window, and it was late in the day.
Heal and Grow by Jake Kendall
The photographs have not done justice to the cottage.
Sarah recalls the website thumbnails: that vibrant red door; those shells, set between the bricks framing the windows; hanging baskets that are an eruption of life and colour… Gorgeous. She’d sent jubilant screenshots to her mother from the train. Yet photographs can’t capture the true allure of this place – the remoteness, the quiet. The trains had taken her only to the nearest village. For the last two miles, Sarah’s taxi was the only vehicle winding down narrow country roads.
Zephyrus by BF Jones
First date
The wind comes in fast, raising clouds of sand, burning their eyes as they run. They hide under an overturned rowing boat. They kiss, the first and last time.
From the Tropics to This by Juanita Rey
Winter.
I hate to say the word.
Can only write it down.
It’s another name for nothingness,
this thing I fear.
Idle Ink 