Oh, I’m no Roman emperor. Kingdoms aren’t for me. My house is my corporation, with no room for mistakes, each outcome calculated, each cost projected, each bread loaf home-baked. Artist and...
A hush fell over our class, as Mrs. Mofid, the principal, boomed, “What is the meaning of this?” Her voice petrified us, like the wave of the wand that turned the heroes of our beloved fairy-tales into stone...
Scoundrel Time: “[I wish I still smoked so that I could sit outside in the dark]” feels candid and personal; it flows with the rhythm of private thought and then, at every turn, unsettling meditations sizzle...
When I was nine years old, a woman came to our house. I was alone. My parents were at work, or on some obscure mission concerning allotments or storage units. Our house was piled with junk, which they...
[Yes, I saw them all, saw them, met some, Richard Hell] Yes, I saw them all, saw them, met some, Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Basquiat, Warhol, Burroughs, Kenneth Koch, and it all left me feeling invisible or fucked, fucked sideways, fucked by a john who...
We are overwrought and underpaid, understood to be over-sensitive, we the underlings of the overtures of overrated undertakers, overcooked and ovaried; we are understudies of our overlords, gathering undergarments to make overexaggerated accusations...
As a young child in Sweden, I was a bold, free-spirited girl; I was at home in my world. I roamed as I pleased in our small fishing village on the west coast, where I was raised by my grandmother, aunt, mother, and cousins. In the summer, I sprawled...
Jimi Hendrix Plays the Star-Spangled Banner For a Crowd of Skeletons Du Bois said there would be days like this: when we must admit That we the People have decided to abandon heroics for the sake Of something more American. We must admit that there...
January: The President taunts the other idiot with nuclear weapons. 🔪🔪🔪 🔪🔪🔪 🔪🔪🔪 I lose my wedding ring because I can’t stop taking it off and nervously playing with it due to the state of …well …everything. Husband doesn’t divorce me. Doesn’t get...
The bananas were rotting on the factory floor outside of St. Petersburg. In early October, the temperature inside the nearly abandoned building held at just above freezing, too cold for the tropical fruit. Banana skins were greying, developing dark...
Letter to the Woman Who Carried Me on the Plane You must have transported hundreds of small squirming packages from one country to another, but of course, you only remember me. I was delightful. I didn’t holler the whole way on that long...
An Atlas of Reds and Blues is a novel that spans a handful of critical minutes—as well as a lifetime—for its protagonist. As she lies in her own driveway in suburban Georgia, bleeding out from a gunshot wound inflicted by an officer of the law, the...
Remembering #Winningteam A “mercantile feminist” learns that Ivanka Trump, her employer, is discontinuing her product line, ca. July 2018 Despite a million fuchsia cat caps knitted by mothers sworn to resist, her father’s win was a...
At the start of 2017, I was in this exact same position, returning from the same writing conference in Mexico, dressed in a black Empire Strikes Back sweatshirt, the evening after Inauguration Day. Nervous. Hands trembling, my left eyelid twitching...
—with respect to Victorine Meurent At the Evergreen State College, I was a poser who sat for a parody of Manet’s Olympia, my cat sitting by my feet as I reclined in the nude, holding a can of Olympia like a coat-of-arms above the family jewels. I...
A few nights ago, my husband and I had a reservation for 8:30 p.m. at a new restaurant in town. When we arrived, the young manager told us they didn’t have a table yet and asked us to wait at the bar. There wasn’t an especially comfortable spot to...
ANOTHER DISASTER Call me ice- Hearted bitch. Mean- Time everything flies Apart, blaze And shrapnel, stars Black-holing and roofs Falling in. Always The electric cuts Out and the tap’s endless Dripping, and he’s Still looking for a Bandaid. We don’t...
In celebration of Scoundrel Time’s second anniversary, our editorial team is excited to announce the winners of our second annual Editors’ Choice Awards. Lorraine Rice’s “Allegiance” is the award-winner in fiction. Here is what Fiction Editor...
In celebration of Scoundrel Time’s second anniversary, our editorial team is excited to announce the winners of our second annual Editors’ Choice Awards. Sally Ball’s “Hold” is the award-winner in poetry. Here is what Poetry Editor Daisy Fried says...
In celebration of Scoundrel Time’s second anniversary, our editorial team is excited to announce the winners of our second annual Editors’ Choice Awards. David L. Engelhardt’s “Born & Raised: Learning to Leave Steel Country” is the award...
My text-based digital photo-collages draw from traditions of urban landscape photography, collage, erasure poetry, altered books, and graffiti/street art. I digitally alter and collage onto my own photographs of murals and graffiti. I add such...
First Camping Trip Mescalero, New Mexico Overhead: the night sky like a dark hand reaching towards me. Around me, all I see are pine trees, our campfire’s light gone. I try to turn around, to go back before my mother realizes I didn’t listen...
The world has split
into a farce that plays
on two landings of the same
staircase. Yes: Treachery
gnaws the bones
of our state, so as
to tip us off, and out.
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Joe Bishop’s high school English teacher posts on Facebook that the body cam footage of his death is no better than a snuff film, and the cop responsible should go to prison for murder. This post ends her relationship with her sister and several of...
