By John Counts [Bio]
John Counts earned an MFA from Columbia College Chicago in 2009 and currently lives in Michigan where he is a crime reporter at The Ann Arbor News. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the Chicago Reader’s Pure Fiction Issue, Hypertext, Midwestern Gothic and “A Detroit Anthology.” He is an editor at the Great Lakes Review where he coordinates the online Narrative Map essay project. Find him online at www.johncountsontheinternet.com.
I met this girl at The Mutiny and we got shitfaced. I mean beyond balls-out fucking blitzed, downing shots of Jameson and sucking down those big-ass mugs of Old Style as tall as your face from chin to forehead. My ride took off. I’m not even sure how she got there. She said her name was Garbo and she was an actress. I told her I was a musician. But I was also just saying. Me and the guys had yet to play a show or really even practice much. The Routines, we called ourselves.
Garbo and I were making out at the end of the bar when the lights went on for closing. I’m pretty sure she came there with her boyfriend. I think she may have mentioned that, but I may have missed it. He’d been her ride and left and now we were rubbing on each other underneath the bar when the lights flicked on and the respective barkeeps started hollering for all us to get the fuck out. The next thing I know we’re staggering on the sidewalk looking at cars zip past on Western while all the other motherfuckers cleared out of the bar too.
(more…)
By Erin Watson [Bio]
Erin Watson is a poet from the South living in Chicago. Her first chapbook, No Experiences, was self-published in 2012. She volunteers for Ag47 Collective, an arts mentorship group that amplifies girls’ creative voices in Logan Square. Sometimes she writes things at torridly.org.
Given the Garden of Eden
Inside a laundromat,
Shirts spun floral colors
And, contented, hummed.
Beyond the vine-coarse windows
Wound through with light,
Greystones grind their teeth
Against the next cascade.
(more…)
By Melanie LaForce [Bio]
Melanie LaForce is a sporadic writer of internet essays that would disappoint her parents. She is a trainer and retired skater for the Windy City Rollers, and a super important researcher at a fancy Chicago institution.
An intentionally modest storefront with an army of calla lily-filled matte white porcelain vases lines the window because calla lilies are the new hydrangeas are the new daisies and a “vintage-style” neon script light over the door displays a single word because single word-named brunch restaurants are the new ampersand-named restaurants
and those motherfucking Yelp reviewers neglected to mention that this place is community-style seating and please don’t sit me next to that waif sparrow woman with the oxblood cloche and matching infinity scarf
and I am seated next to her and her skin smells like calla lilies because calla lilies are the new hydrangeas and a tall urban-mulleted waitress with ear plugs resembling deer antlers is pushing a tea-stained paper menu into my hands and “The special this morning was oyster-braised French Toast but we have SOLD OUT” she says pointedly and Oxblood Cloche moans as though impaled with disappointment
(more…)
