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When I picked up my cell, I heard Susannah muttering

Saints and bunnies! as she left the bookstore.

A hundred thousand titles in stock

Dating for Dummies! The Complete Idiot's Guide

to Learning Yiddish! Men Made Easy!

and not a blessed one to be found

on cooking for vegetarian zombies.

For the ninety-ninth time, I told her, same

as you'd feed any other rabbit-food fascist.

If Shirley's too good for grits and cheese and slaw,

your Aunt Marybelle has a guest room just as nice,

Aunt Marybelle being Unitarian, see,

and thus already well-versed

in unnatural ways with peanut butter

not to mention their so-called salads

(token shreds of lettuce and tomato

smothered beneath more trimmings than a turkey),

what with half of her church being herbivores.

Me, I don't hold with pumpkin seeds and papayas.

You can doll up an ugly girl with a fancy dress,

and pretty up rice with unpronounceable mushrooms,

but flayed by a job that leaves me more dead

than alive at the end of each day, all I want

is meat on my plate and a woman whose flesh

glows when the lights are still on. But, all told,

Shirley still is kin, and Susannah kind as they come,

and Aunt Marybelle more than helpful in her way

(her scrambled tofu's near as it gets to brains).




Peg Duthie shares a house in Nashville, Tennessee, with a brown dog and a piano tuned a half-step high. Her poems have appeared in Dead Mule, flashquake, and elsewhere, and she owes Heisenberg's ghost a round. You can find her poem Some Houseguests Can't Be Helped in our archives.
Current Issue
22 Apr 2024

We’d been on holiday at the Shoon Sea only three days when the incident occurred. Dr. Gar had been staying there a few months for medical research and had urged me and my friend Shooshooey to visit.
...
For a long time now you’ve put on the shirt of the walls,/just as others might put on a shroud.
Tu enfiles longuement la chemise des murs,/ tout comme d’autres le font avec la chemise de la mort.
The little monster was not born like a human child, yelling with cold and terror as he left his mother’s womb. He had come to life little by little, on the high, three-legged bench. When his eyes had opened, they met the eyes of the broad-shouldered sculptor, watching them tenderly.
Le petit monstre n’était pas né comme un enfant des hommes, criant de froid et de terreur au sortir du ventre maternel. Il avait pris vie peu à peu, sur la haute selle à trois pieds, et quand ses yeux s’étaient ouverts, ils avaient rencontré ceux du sculpteur aux larges épaules, qui le regardaient tendrement.
We're delighted to welcome Nat Paterson to the blog, to tell us more about his translation of Léopold Chauveau's story 'The Little Monster'/ 'Le Petit Monstre', which appears in our April 2024 issue.
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By: Ana Hurtado
Art by: delila
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Art by: Kim Hu
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Issue 26 Feb 2024
Issue 19 Feb 2024
Issue 12 Feb 2024
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