34MAG

Home
Archive

Sitemap - 2020 - 34MAG

She wants to show the world her version of an Asian Nerd Girl.

Where am I going on the next magic carpet ride?

As the unimaginable reality of the military coup unfolded I wrote incessantly in my diary.

Two visions one reality.

Airport fiction? What is airport fiction?

My fantasies will take me anywhere I want to go.

Someone in the audience yelled out, “Hey bitch, shave your legs!”

You try to smile forcefully in front of the mirror. Is a forced smile so ugly?

I left my aunt the watercolor paintings.

The rider’s V-rod skidded to a stop in the Roadway Diner’s gravel parking lot.

I imagined the jungle, the Frenchness. I think Henri Rousseau.

Subway

I want to be like you. Another shot. I want to be a part of your family. Shot. Why don’t you love me? Shot.

You’re a star in the making. Feel good?

She was better than this.

Where do they go when it is all over?

You need darkness to see yourself.

I could still buy music online, and there were other record stores in Grand Rapids. But this was my store.

Relationships aren’t meant to always be Eskimo kisses and shared bowls of popcorn.

You never know. That’s why you gotta live it every day.

And then I had an idea.

It’s all change, it’s all crumbling.

Dora, elbows on the table, plays with a slice of blueberry pie. What were they thinking, they got you to babysit, Dora says.

I think I know which green I want, which green is better.

Time out for poetry an’ shit.

When Petrovich began writing the first few bars of his interpretation, he instantly began feeling jittery.

Damn weather like this killed my Christy.

My father said to my brother and me: “Doesn’t she remind you of Evil Bavmorda?”

The miserable specimen of a husband didn’t even look up when she said she was going out to get some cigarettes.

I cannot say home in French because there isn’t really a word.

Why didn’t you tell me you were in a horror movie?

She turned to Sean one day, and in her raspy Brooklyn accent which drawled out vowels in a dark tone, she said, “You are gonna die young and nobody will notice.”

What is going on? What is this place?

Clock in, and stand around for 10 minutes. Talk to your co-workers. You are all complaining, this is your family.

How much paint will it take before she gets over it?

When we find a vaccine for each other’s fears and denial.

you might tell me something/about the dandelion & how it is not a flower

The clock on the mantelpiece, the clock that her mother had wound religiously once a week, and that had been right only twice a day since she died, was gone.

A fresh start could be made.

We took spins around town.

This time, dammit, she was going to vote no matter what.

When the music starts, her face brightens.

Everything, she thought, is an accident of where you are.

He wants that happy ending for the country that we once wanted for GN’R.

I dare not show my face because if the others knew, I would never get out.

Nothing gets said.

—and so hearing of the famous man’s death, they sat on the steps of the New York Public Library, between Patience and Fortitude...

We are on a slow-mo plane crash.

I think you should come out as an artist.

There was a kiss.

The music is Blues, reminding her where she is lost.

Is Mama coming home soon?

Henry Vestine at the Butte was something to see.

Don’t you remember that time I told you I dreamed I was a girl with really long straight black hair?

There is no such thing as lunar panels.

The thumping started again, louder than ever.

The quartet was mercifully concluding its shrill rendition of The Duchess of Devonshire’s Reel when commotion ensued.

On the way to Saks I thought about Sally Snow and wondered what she looked like and who she could be?

Remember me, Laura?

I am lost in the world of birds around me.

I stare at my phone, finger lingering over the call button under her name: Momma.

Which children should I tell you about?

I spread my arms wide and I lean over the pool. The wind tears at my eyelashes and my hair, and I fall, spinning end over end over end…

Are you over him yet? Or are you going to take this one to the grave?

She considered herself a lover of words and of reading. But these books, these words, were so dry, so representative of hours wasted.

I texted my mom “here” and took a seat on a bench facing out to the water.

The recycling crew hit the floor, and my grandma still lay in the ICU.

We’ll use the whole damn lane because it’s a public place that we own.

Jake was a good man, she thought. She was lucky to share her life with him. She was blessed.

On the fifth day I fall asleep reading poetry.

Some men prefer dolls.

I would like a happy ending.

I’d seen you before. Not you, but every other West Point-to-Kuwait-to-Some-Other-Place guy.

“Do we have access to the library?” was the first question the woman I’d fallen in love with had asked, and she forced a smile that, as usual, I saw through.

Each raindrop is a memory.

Would I still be pure?

Sand is a prisoner of a shore.

You will experience an electric shift.

How many shoulder touches with flipped hair.

Seeking someone who understands that opposites are often the same thing with different results.

You should show some respect.

My father’s heavy hand pushed on the back of my neck, to hush me, get me down.

Take care. What does she mean by that? Be careful or be on your guard for…something wicked this way comes?

Hello? Yeah, I need to talk to someone about help with my rent. I just got an eviction notice.

Could be birds are the kids.

I’m going to start a business of making words for you.

Someone had asked her if she was a dancer. “No,” she had said and smugly added, “I’m a painter.”

Nobody made music in the summer and the poetry was unoriginal.

Waiting for my life to start again.

I want to get out of here.

Here’s why I didn’t participate in the #MeToo movement.

To all the women lying in their beds saying my turn.

She is a stranger, and she is welcomed home.

I fear I’ll lose my intensity, my stubbornness in the face of injustice.

I saw a life pan out in my bowl of scraps.

Mr Kulkarni came striding into the office in the green T-shirt.

He would gaze across the wind-rippled prairie that traveled on and on to the end of the world. Was that where the people had gone?

I hummed, skipped through the neighborhoods of Paris, made my way to the Louvre.

Do not cry, Penelope.

He has to hurry to catch a plane.

OK, imagine if all the roads and the streets in LA were completely empty.

I had my first Sex Ed lesson in the back seat of a car. Not the pull down your pants kind of lesson.

There comes a point when service has ended (roughly between 3 and 5pm).

This was the hellishly hot week I was let go. I was a copywriter in fashion expected to write 65 clothing descriptions a day.

It was possible I was being scammed, I told myself, but very unlikely I would be kidnapped or hurt or robbed. That kind of thing really didn’t happen much in Egypt.

© 2024 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture