A poem by Karpov
April 22, 2024
I visited Greenfield Village on December 26th. Fires burned in front of houses, it is holiday nights. I went up to the Webster House, and curiously, as I recall it, the house moves and grows and slips into the dark. For some inexplicable reason, thighs against the thick, red-velvet rope, I slip into a dream state...
Antonia Piedmonte-Lang
April 11, 2024
Steam curls, dancing over a bowl of homemade lentil soup, warming the tops of my thighs sitting in front of a fire, tucked away in a friend’s backyard on Larkins Street...
A poem by Anna Sysling
March 25, 2024
A poem by Karpov
March 18, 2024
The inspiration for this piece comes from my personal experiences during the 2017 Mosul conflict, where I witnessed the devastating impact of war on the people and the environment. This piece offers a unique perspective on the complexities of war and the profound impact it has on those involved...
Karpov
January 29, 2024
My sister turned 15 last week. She plays the flute and studies all the time. She bakes cupcakes and tries to make friends. In the smartphone. hormone. hothouse. Called high school...
Anna Sysling
January 8, 2024
Last night I went to a broadcasters’ awards dinner where a woman in a silver sequined dress announced a local station’s prize for Best Breaking News Story of the year...
Anna Sysling
September 4, 2023
Feels so rehearsed, like a simulation. Another memory event. Over time it becomes easier to detach. I envision myself as disconnected from them, their spirits expelling out of their bodies. How can I hurt for someone who doesn't even exist?..
Marissa Jezak
July 17, 2023
Weird Magic is a snapshot of several moments that played out in my life over the course of a week or so. The synchronicities both benevolent and inconvenient that I share in this work all felt like tangible and cosmically-time invitations into a deeper level of witnessing and experiencing the present moment. In an ongoing effort to resist the engineered and addictive quality of this little dopamine slot machine in my pocket, I attempt to share (and maybe even celebrate) the absurd and karmic magic of my IRL experiences; while also noticing the ways that attachment to these little narratives that shape my days can be thrilling, self-limiting and entirely arbitrary all at once.
Anna Sysling
June 29, 2023
Can you capture the feeling of discovery? Balancing the territorial need to own our places with the curious desire to change our experiences over time. How often do we actively work to outweigh the fear of rewriting in order to see the world around us with fresh eyes...
Maddie Boyer
March 6, 2023
The play begins with the title track for the show, James Fauntleroy’s "Is it Morning Yet.” The lights come to a slow rise at the end of the song. The commotion of the market begins. QUINTERIUS enters with the first wave of people dressed in his uniform for the day–a lazily put together Santa Clause costume–beard and all...
a play by will street
February 6, 2023
A fair fight is non-existent. You always use everything around and fight dirty and to the point if you gonna do it for real, in any kind of capacity for real experience that you might have as a human being, which by the way, I question more than agree with the fact that I am one of you, or maybe even the same alien race if that might be who you are...
Kirill Slavin
June 20, 2022
Like I was saying this was one of those nights that was so cold all you saw moving was the steam from the sewer. Every other animal besides us knows to get inside and stay there when it’s that cold. I had spent most of my shift in the valet booth reading, punctuated with the occasional trip out back to smoke a cigarette with the cooks from the hotel bar. Wasn’t really making any money but I still had the clock goin. Interestingly enough, slow nights like this was when me and the guys got along best, so we hadn’t got into it or anything that night. I got a cheeseburger from the hotel bar for my “lunch” and about halfway through it one of the guys came in, we’ll call him Mo...
Walter Lucken IV
February 7, 2022
Shortly after Samuel Davidson’s absence, five more workers disappeared and fearing it a trend, the boss became concerned about losing the contract. When none of the workers returned his calls and he received angry protests as to why trash had not been picked up in certain locations, he panicked and began the arduous process of covering for the missing workers himself. Unable to manage the workload, the company lost contracts, and soon enough, what remaining workers stayed began to drift away and the company disintegrated...
This short story explores the possibility of upending a system without the need for violence or destruction. What happens when people collectively reject a system built on their own exploitation?..
Rey Hinojosa
October 18, 2021
To Whom It May Concern: the name is JAK, I don’t beat around the bush unless I’m planting flowers there – here, I am lookin for a job and what else is new like ain’t we all? Trying to find the position of our dreams...
Joshua Kochis
October 11, 2021
These in particular I wrote over a holiday break, when I found myself avoiding my last round of seminar papers...
Walter Lucken IV
September 6, 2021
For the launch party, which was held outdoors in a very socially distanced empty lot, she asked me to write a poem about anything I felt needed to be said - to my hometown and the broader world. Pulling back the curtain - collecting the receipts, if you will...
MJ Slide
August 23, 2021
A creative flash non-fiction piece exploring our physical relationship to the sounds of the city from a newcomer's POV.
"Wear sturdy boots and withhold judgment. Open your mind's eye - feel it in your chest. It's gonna be ok."...
MJ Slide
July 26, 2021
You might ask who sent me. Well, I would remind you that those who my work loves, it cannot name. There will be some allusions here and there, maybe an argot or a jargon that the attuned ear can capture, but no names...
Walter Lucken IV
June 7, 2021
Demeter, past post flourish. a hag lost in mort carrying corpus. Seeker, Who is to welcome her summer?
Daisy
May 21, 2021
After a cloudy day of avoiding potholes, driving at sunset while everything glows orange is a necessary meditation. Driving around in a city this big introduces techniques and etiquette specific to the neighborhoods—learning when to roll through the lights or maintain speed while someone is stood in the turning lane is part of demonstrating respect for the areas passed through. Detroiters made the cars, and they make the rules too. Enjoy the view while it lasts and stay reckless...
Amelia Gillis
January 11, 2021
At TCF they scream “stop the steal”, we insist that there’s no evidence. We insist on science, reason, civil society, even democracy after it was a fiction all year. The water in the Catskills is so cold it stops time. I imagine I can float here for ten years, steeling myself for another 6 months of 2020. I’ll have all the answers when I get out of the water. The teenagers 5.9 feet away are from the future. Maybe that’s why I keep getting plucked out of the frying pan, to give them the pros and cons of civilization before our world is forgotten forever. There’s a lot to be said for it, which is why we keep ending up in a defensive position...
Walter Lucken IV and Dominic Palarchio
December 28, 2020
The machines came to gnash their teeth, and bite at me, in the winter of 2017. My sister with light blue blush, and the poison ivy, wound round her face in mourning, was eaten the day before. And our brother, smoke-blackened wedding chapel, dangling snaggle-toothed staircase, collided with ground, hardened mud and frosty dew, just the day before that...
A poem written from the perspective of an old house and an accompanying personal essay...
Christiana Laine
November 23, 2020
Reader, don't hesitate on wondering whether or not this narrative is flirting with the existing conditions of Detroit, or for that matter any other city. It is. And on purpose. That's the point. The narrative however, like any science fiction story, is open to interpretation. I'm not necessarily creating a pessimistic nor an optimistic narrative. I'm creating an alternative environment by simply suggesting possibilities based on existing conditions.
José Arturo Joglar-Cadilla
October 26, 2020