Summer 2026

In this perilous weather, the car lights on the Mass Pike are
my shepherds, whose reconnaissance I bless, mum blossoms

splashed upon the darkness, in league with their errant cousins
-in-color, the orange reflective dashes marking lanes.

 Note: 96th of October will be publishing Peter Valente’s complete translation of Pelleasters, from which this chapter is taken. The complete Pelleasters, will contain footnotes to clarify all obscure terms…

Ellie’s toy dinosaur came to life the first time at her father’s funeral.

Here, brides fell from the sky, drifting silently through the night like wingless white angels. It happened on certain lonely evenings, when the guards were napping in their stations and…

All their husbands smelled bad, and it wasn’t just because they were garbage men. The tips of their thumbs and two fingers were rancid and rough, perpetually sweaty and sour…

Inside the Sleeping Museum the Linnaean taxonomies mash, remix, and mash again. Flora and fauna, murmuring in their vitrines, swap costumes, birthing unnatural histories. Under fluorescent suns Victorian wunderkammers slosh…

Sometimes I wish I could climb inside my husband and disappear. I think that if I could shrink myself small enough I could crawl in between his ribs and make…

A cardboard box, the size of a footlocker, is brought to my door. It has been re-enforced with fiberglass straps, and bulges to the point of bursting. I had ordered…

Background In an attempt to understand how Western Civilization tried to explain subjective experience, you could draw a very oversimplified picture that goes something like: Religion (pre-Early Modern)—> Heresy (17th/18th…

 Anna made sure no one else was in the women’s bathroom before entering the stall nearest the window and latching herself in. She took a medium-point permanent marker from her…

I thought it was a dream, when I coughed my teeth into the sink. I’ve had similar dreams before. Even looked them up. Anxiety, according to the search engine on…

He remarked that the summer was over, Petersburg’s nightless days would turn back into dayless nights. And he said this too, that the whole idea of a woman writing poetry was ridiculous.

Judy Grahn’s magnificent The Queen of Wands is long out of print, though second-hand copies are available still, and very inexpensively. We would however suggest The Judy Grahn Reader, which…

We Like The Moon! The Spongemonkies classic song from 2002, which spawned the famous Quiznos ads of 2003. The creators of this collage-puppet masterpiece, RatherGood.Com, are well worth a visit.…