"Hoisted into Nothingness" by Tricia Louvar
"Twin Peaks" by Julie Chen
Do you regret anything about last night? His body and especially his calves
are skinnier than mine. If I pushed him off the bed, he'd get lodged between the mattress
and the wall. Like a chewed-up tennis ball caught in the neighbor’s gutter,
a katamari – collecting broken earphones, left socks,
my bracelet from that flea market in Berlin,
which I might have actually left in someone else's bedroom. Do I regret anything
about last night? Not the foil-wrapped burrito, half-naked on the nightstand. The backing beats: raindrops on tin
awnings,
clinking bottles. The drunk texts to a different boy, I miss you, I want to see you, I wanna suck you off, I wanna
drink some more, swallow the summer, belch. Add my own
to the afterlives embodied in the San Francisco fog.
Do you regret anything about last night? His voice is rubbery. It wobbles
like a polygraph, tastes of latex, an obedient blowjob, singeing my tongue with sulfur. I wonder if it always asks
questions
the way a finger will test the sharpness of a knife, hands that usually don't do stuff like this
will pull apart closed legs. I wonder if it always asks questions,
but doesn’t wait for answers, sober ones,
till the morning after. I don't regret anything. I won't for a while.
I just woke up, facing my roommate’s bed. There's a thunderstorm in my temples and a flash flood
rising in my throat. The pieces of last night are magnets.
They tug at my refusal to put them together. I try
to imagine my shoulder blades as mountains.
are skinnier than mine. If I pushed him off the bed, he'd get lodged between the mattress
and the wall. Like a chewed-up tennis ball caught in the neighbor’s gutter,
a katamari – collecting broken earphones, left socks,
my bracelet from that flea market in Berlin,
which I might have actually left in someone else's bedroom. Do I regret anything
about last night? Not the foil-wrapped burrito, half-naked on the nightstand. The backing beats: raindrops on tin
awnings,
clinking bottles. The drunk texts to a different boy, I miss you, I want to see you, I wanna suck you off, I wanna
drink some more, swallow the summer, belch. Add my own
to the afterlives embodied in the San Francisco fog.
Do you regret anything about last night? His voice is rubbery. It wobbles
like a polygraph, tastes of latex, an obedient blowjob, singeing my tongue with sulfur. I wonder if it always asks
questions
the way a finger will test the sharpness of a knife, hands that usually don't do stuff like this
will pull apart closed legs. I wonder if it always asks questions,
but doesn’t wait for answers, sober ones,
till the morning after. I don't regret anything. I won't for a while.
I just woke up, facing my roommate’s bed. There's a thunderstorm in my temples and a flash flood
rising in my throat. The pieces of last night are magnets.
They tug at my refusal to put them together. I try
to imagine my shoulder blades as mountains.
Julie Chen is from San Jose, California, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she works as a paralegal.
Tricia Louvar lives in the Pacific Northwest and studied journalism, poetry, aesthetics, and documentary photography in college and beyond. She works in publishing as a visual artist and writer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Brevity, Orion Online, Zyzzyva, and more. tricialouvar.com
Artist Statement: At a Saturday kaffeeklatsch, after splitting a piece of banana bread, I am the one nibbling pieces of its raw sugar left behind on the plate. Such an instantsummarizes my artistic impulses of focusing on the leftovers and the overlooked. I investigate the human condition and its relationship to impermanence with digital and analog tools.
Artist Statement: At a Saturday kaffeeklatsch, after splitting a piece of banana bread, I am the one nibbling pieces of its raw sugar left behind on the plate. Such an instantsummarizes my artistic impulses of focusing on the leftovers and the overlooked. I investigate the human condition and its relationship to impermanence with digital and analog tools.
