In a lyric essay that is very-literally earth-scorching, read Anna Journey’s WIDOWMAKER: HOW TO GET STRUCK BY LIGHTNING in issue two of Better: Culture and Lit. A piece, from the opening:
“When I admit my secret wish is to get struck by lightning, I’m not speaking figuratively. I don’t mean struck by a blinding desire or love at first sight. I’m talking about a bolt five times as hot as the surface of the sun. A stroke that can run 100,000 miles in just one second, that stretches and sparks over three miles long. But I want more than the science, the pie charts, the hard facts. I want the feeling the writer Gretel Ehrlich—twice-struck in her life—describes during her first experience with lightning as it moved through her body as she walked the Wyoming plains: it felt, she claims, ‘as though sequins had been poured down my legs.'”
Also, while you’re at Better, check out Heather Christle’s AND THIS TOO COMES APART, a poem w/ video.
Kimberly Ann Southwick – editor of Gigantic Sequins and all-around lovely person – has a great poem – THIS, AND – this week at Everyday Genius.
Mary Cafferty’s TORN MAP CITIES is beautiful and is over at apt:
“I felt you diminish inside of me and you have been diminishing ever since, the dull flame growing duller, the used up head of a once-lit match. I lost you for good somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. The last thought I had was of you sitting in a reclining airline seat, reading over the safety precautions, wondering how you would fare if you had to jump out over the ocean.”
Sarah Rose Etter – author of the wonderful TONGUE PARTY – has a new story, WRETCHER, at Green Mountains Review:
“The chair spun slowly at first. I thought of my love’s right set of eyelashes and tears started at my eyes, my chest began to crush inward. The wretching wanted to come out of me, wanted to come up and into the world, wanted to be created.”
SDL favorite – and Issue Two contributor with FORTUNE TELLER – Delaney Nolan continues to kill it with WORLD THAT OWES, this week’s featured story at Necessary Fiction.