February 2009
1 post
A note from the editor
I think we should see other people.
I asked some writers to compose a story or poem that focuses on a character. I live in a place with all these characters. They couple. They room. They drink hairy liquor. They play contact sports.
Where we live, everyone believes books will turn people on. Zadie Smith’s collection of 24 writers, The Book of Other People, knocked my socks off. I was so...
Contains
Mike Young
Gabe Durham
Jono Tosch
Lyndsey Cohen
Edward Mullany
Jeannie Hoag
Rachel B. Glaser
Ari Feld
Lily Ladewig
Brian Mihok
Boomer Pinches
Christy Crutchfield
Heather Christle
Brian Baldi
Jack Christian
Anjali Khosla Mullany
Francesca Chabrier
Seth Landman
January 2009
19 posts
Mike Young
Minh-Huyen Wants a Tattoo
Of a beer dipped penny. Of an allowable pillow. wait how bad do u want it? um really bad. hahaha how bad? (this is math, you’re good at math). Breakfast for supper at the Blueberry Twist. On Friday nights, she watches Boy Meets World. TGIF. She’ll graduate in three years, A after A. Her finger makes a Greyhound through the biscuits. Hound gravy. will u get...
Gabe Durham
Joy of Knowing
Although Gabe’s story does not appear in this online version, it is so great that we hope you will purchase a print copy of Seeing Other People so you too can read this compelling adolescent fantasy. In the meantime, please visit Gabe’s awesome website to read more about his interest in geneology, things that are funny or true, and a cappella.
Jono Tosch
Emily
I visited our home in Carmel.
Do you remember when you said
Half the rooms should be painted
In the spirit of a looming watermelon?
It rained abundantly for one hour
Each time we said hello.
Was it a bone you found in your dumpling?
I remember a conversation about a bird
And the nests it would build
Had it not been partially dead. Nonetheless
I am making progress. Each...
Lyndsey Cohen
She Used To Be A Waitress In Poughkeepsie
The postman came to the door and told Gladys to get spiritual. It feels like a hot bath, he said. She tried to stay positive, but his eyes kept blinking. Do you know how to time travel, he asked. Do you know how to bury in the winter. Gladys wanted to make steak tartare and then cartwheel through the living room. She wanted to be a lamp post or a...
Edward Mullany
Roger Ettinger
Roger Ettinger, a department store manager, was a week shy of his forty-second birthday when the following, seemingly unimportant incident occurred in his windowless office at the mall: a common housefly that had somehow survived the winter and was flying in arbitrary circles around his desk and his head, successfully avoiding the occasional swat of his hand, flew into his mouth...
Jeannie Hoag
I’m Not Phyllis
I am not Phyllis, who bathes
in the sun. I am here and
at any moment will be here.
When I come home she is not
waiting for me, she is waiting for me
to leave. The lady behind me
says I am so sorry
I made you wait
to the man behind me,
who is not Phyllis, who is also not
the husband. I am not the husband
of Phyllis, though she calls me
home to her, though she does...
Rachel B. Glaser
Paul is the only person
everyone is by mistake butt
Paul is on purpose
millions of people have bodies
by mistake they make careers
Paul Newman is a homepage
his boyhood beats my bookcase
when I saw him I was
now I still am
Paul Newman is cuter than Michaelangelo’s David
and way funnier
Travolta is cheesy
Brando too...
Ari Feld
The Homeowner
A steel mill scabbed the pasture. Its stacks jabbed the low-slung sky, pointer fingers, or middle fingers spiking from the raw-knuckled factory roof, goddamning the locked gates and rotting lots and whatever had cut its hands from production. The compound looked like a castle when I loosened my eyes and thought of Transylvania. The women I was staying with had told me that...
Lily Ladewig
Thumbelina
Let’s be thumb-sized.
Both begotten by barley.
I’ll cover you in a mint leaf,
unpetalling our coverlets.
Kidnap me. Espouse me
to the toad wearing a top hat.
To the mole. The animal bride
in all variants of the tale type.
Humble. My trousseau
of black fur
in the harshest of climates.
To escape, undo my sash.
Tie me to the butterfly.
Steal out the door
to glimpse the sky....
Brian Mihok
Nervous Germans: Robert
Robert wants so badly after reading a book where a man wakes up as a bug to wake up as a bug. He researches the avenues of metamorphosis where science has been where it is going. He is dissapointed that of all things science has turned into other things, none are into bugs. Robert reads that just recently a team of biologists & geneticists discovered a way of...
Boomer Pinches
The Doctor’s Wife
In that long hour after dinner and before the crickets, on the deck (a ten-year-old addition that still feels new) overlooking the vast and verdant backyard, the doctor’s wife delivers the punchline as usual (it is hardly the first time she has told this anecdote), preceded by a pause and two syllables of laughter, immediately followed by a scan of the three other faces around...
Christy Crutchfield
Fallen Clay Pigeon Excerpt from “Pray for Rain”
She didn’t show up on my doorstep, really, but on the barstool next to me asking
for half a beer if I could manage, parting the corner of a coaster into layers
like book pages. She was stuck here because a road trip with her boyfriend went
sour. I’ve never been here, she said. I have a lot to learn about this place.
There was the...
Heather Christle
Gordon Halpern
seen here tagging a lynx,
is not a man you’d marry.
Is the world’s chief miracle.
Is filled completely with sand.
Gordon Halpern, an expert
outdoorsman and avid consumer
of Soviet erotica, wishes
to thank the town for all
the kind letters he’s received,
and directs our young readers
to keep their small ears at the door.
Mr. Halpern, the Lion’s Club
Face of the Month,...
Brian Baldi
The Ombudsman
Without a doubt he is coming
around the corner when he comes,
an orange of assertions
going on about his liver,
coming from coming from shrubbery.
It is conceivable he has failed at some things
made false appeals to cars and character
actor mistakes. I’ve known him for sidewalk
feet at a time, and seen his slow
roll-up on the shorties.
He is much-discussing.
He is prior...
Jack Christian
Marie
Karin’s parents sent a couple
Nice wishes, and off they went around the bend, on a Jonathan,
Where the road can’t Siobhan. Tom was from Homer, Alaska –
Tuesday born, raised by nonesuch, fostered by Julia. Graham
Did everything for a reason, was math proficient. Norm did it
For Eleanor. Aunt Jay did it with J.P., thereby upsetting
Many people. This made the newsletter. Did you...
Anjali Khosla Mullany
The Duck or Marjorie
When Marjorie had a duck, it slept in Marjorie’s shower stall. Marjorie felt bad about this because she assumed that the duck would prefer to sleep in or near a pond, or at least a kiddie pool, or even a bathtub, but those options weren’t available.
The duck’s flat, stone-hard beak was the same vaguely variated color as blacktop. After a morning...
Francesca Chabrier
Jigsaw
Although Fra’s story does not appear in this online version, it is so great that we hope you will purchase a print copy of Seeing Other People so you too can read this sad and tender poem. Or contact me and I will contact Ms. Chabrier for you!
Seth Landman
Problems of Perspective
We should see all the problems of perspective. Mathematicians who are at the junction of our two distinct lines. Because parallel means you get to touch, you get to move constantly towards or away. We should see the point or, if the boundaries of our bodies propose otherwise, we should see ourselves, at least. O painter! How do I say what I mean? We are small in the...