Bare, bird-chested boys play touch
football in the street, reenact
WrestleMania in the fenced-in front yard.
When an errant pass rocks a mailbox
the whole block takes off running.
The habitual smokers lit their cigarettes in front of the pachinko parlor. Their grey hair was plated to their heads, their faces scarred by age, their suits disheveled, and eyes reflecting a dull gleam. In an almost perfect unison, lulled by an exhaled cloud of smoke, they let their heads fall back onto the wall in a movement of fatigue. As the parlor doors slid open, the sound of metallic balls rattling in plastic trays, coins clinking, dropping into slots, the siren call of mechanical voices, all boomed in their ears.
Read MoreIf I’m from anywhere, I suppose it’s Iowa. I was born there but left when I was two, my father hauling my mom and my older sister and me across nearly 1,000 miles of interstate to Wilmington, Delaware, where he took a company job selling industrial tools. It would be almost four decades before I returned. Any memories of the Hawkeye state cast during those early years must have been ousted rather swiftly by generic pastoral renderings, the likes of which adorn the glossy calendars in pharmacy checkout lanes.
Read MoreIt wasn’t until I left & came back like a field
of perennial flowers after a long winter that I
understood what it meant to exist as a ghost
to people I’d known as if we didn’t all
ditch class & sit under the same rusty bleachers
searching for ways to believe in fragility
You are driving into the mountains. This is the first thing you notice as you move deeper into Western Pennsylvania. The second is the message on the dashboard: Low tire pressure. A patter of rain starts. The sky darkens; the sun retires early in January. It’s probably best to pull over. Call someone, but who? You don’t know anyone in the Pittsburgh area. Scroll through the contacts in your phone; dial the first number that makes sense.
Read MoreTwo ropes
and the girls
oscillating—quick
turn all around
feet. Their voices
somehow flat
and birdsong,
touch the ground
To me, the word Punk describes a certain type of people, a certain lifestyle. Punks are extreme in their look. Extreme in fashion and behavior. Punks are loud and proud and in your face. They don’t adhere to any rules. For example, a punk girl might choose to not shave her armpits or legs. She simply lets her body do what it naturally does; she does not alter it. Punk can be anything from dreadlocks, hair in its most unaltered form, to bright intense dyed colors, spiked up with hair cement into sharp inhuman angles.
Read MoreLast night I dreamt of my dissertation-
the committee was a trio
of cocky frat boys:
all bared teeth, baseball caps, and bravado
and the thesis I had to defend
was me—
How voluminous noons stood sideways
to tell forests the hovercraft flies.
I’ve lost track—never ran track,
despite Dave’s deepest aspirations.
We sure razored the boomerang though.
In Strike Me Down, the latest novel from Mindy Mejia, the sport of kickboxing does indeed provide the central metaphor, but it also functions as a tool for characterization. As both combat sport and high-dollar entertainment business, kickboxing is a maul, cleaving apart the central characters’ civilized selves from their baser desires, exposing a raw edge and forcing them to face truths about themselves and each other.
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Gish Jen’s latest novel, The Resisters, is what might happen if Margaret Atwood’s classic The Handmaid’s Tale met the beloved movie The Sandlot in a not-too-far-off alternative universe where AI rules supreme. A testament to the revolutionary power of the pick-up game, The Resisters explores the survival of a family under the eye of “Aunt Nettie,” a big-brotheresque artificial intelligence program who manages every aspect of life, political and domestic (basically, your Alexa-fueled nightmares come to life).
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