a journal of beautiful literature
by COURTNEY LEBLANC Spring 2000, just a few months after we worried the world would end with Y2K or at least fry our electronics. Neither of those happened but we still marveled at this new millennium. I was 21, a mediocre waitress at Applebee’s and you were the roommate of the blind date I had […]
Read More Ricochetby CHARLES J. MARCH III “No Strings Attached” On a swing, a young girl begged her caretaker to take notice of her, and as she was about to jump, she said, “Look, Mother, I’m going to fly.” “Doomsday Prepping” Would you care if I don’t go to your funeral? “The Acumen of Social Anxiety” Somewhere […]
Read More TEXT OBJECTIONSby MARIJEAN ELIZABETH The Screaming Void We are shaped by what sees us. My whole life I’ve felt more seen by places than people, which is why my skin crawls to get out of this town, this state. I want to be seen by other things because here is too small for me. For years […]
Read More Love Poem to the Midwestby Thea Zimmer Found! No getting here. Just here. So fuckin sudden. No feet, no mouth to scream. An ocean of freaks, “30,000,” did someone say? Each and every voice, singled out. Don’t let me scream. Just look at the sky. The colors swirling. Shiny dots. They float and flicker. Twinkle and pop. The twilight […]
Read More Bad-Ass Boomer Told Usby BRADFORD NOLEN In this classroom, the resilient tile grid of the floor meets the bland cinder block grid of the walls meets the drop-down acoustic tile grid of the ceiling meets the gridlocked modern mind of man. Numb, numb, numb, numb, numb. The end of the professor’s statement rises, to bait an intrepid soul. […]
Read More Riot at the Bureau of Choreographed Screamingby CHRIS BULLARD Acquiring so much had left us desolate. We were stymied by our plenty. Our storage space was full. Our social calendar was full. We had to ease around the chairs to get to the table. We had to bypass the table to get to the hall. The kitchen was unusable because of […]
Read More Tidying Upby BENJAMIN DREVLOW That scene in American History X. You know the one. Or maybe it was Higher Learning, I always get those confused. That curb stomp scene always reminding me of the time I tripped and face-planted in the barn while corralling bull calves, to get castrated, my two front teeth chomping down on all that […]
Read More My Childhood Trauma PTSD as Triggered by the Following Movie MontageSuper shifts and settles and starts the story mid-fry. “Lemme me rap it out for you, Zacharia. This is the sad tale of Shakin’ the Bad. Shakin’ was my main man, used to visit me most every night back in the day. This was three years past, and I was still a young chump workin’ […]
Read More NIGHT SHIFT: An Excerpt from Spark Park by Alex KuderaDutch [Note: The following documents were included in the liner notes to Bad Flag’s history-spanning boxset, Dutch, released by Bright Little Light in 2019.] Fiery Tale: A Brief History of Bad Flag “A work of art has to exist in a world as an object, as real as the sun, grass, a rock, water, and […]
Read More DUTCH by Roy ChristopherAfter last call at The Friendly Beast, Celena Lyon picked up the glasses and swept away the straggler barflies while her boss stayed in the back room with his fingers in his ears so as not to hear himself sing. It was a gimmick bar, one meant to capitalize on a long dead fame. In […]
Read More THE FRIENDLY BEAST by Willie Davis