Author: okaydonkey7

Animal Relief by Rachel Becker

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We’re sitting on our first adult couch
to which the cat has already done his worst,
fabric pilling. It’s from Jordan’s.
We spent real money.

From here, the crooked chandelier jangles
on its chain. Mismatched bulbs flicker
like filmstrips, our dinner table,
paint-stained, pocked—again, the cat.

Sometimes I clear plates too soon.
Evil waitress, my husband jokes, fork raised.

So different from how my father ate,
hunched over and full of complaint,
the meat, too dry, and beans, over-boiled.

He left the table, still chewing,
like a child, who had soiled himself.

Rachel Becker’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in journals including North American Review, Post Road, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry South, and RHINO. She is also an assistant poetry editor for Porcupine Literary: A journal by and for teachers. She lives in Boston. 

Now I Turn Myself into Origami by Susan Israel

On By okaydonkey7In flash fictionLeave a comment

I make myself into a chrysanthemum so I can fit in this box, the box our vacuum came in; it’s not so big that I don’t have to fold myself first. Knees drawn up, arms wrapped around me, head down. It’s 85 degrees but my teeth are chattering; I’m a fluttering paper flower. I can still hear the heavy footsteps that stomped through the classroom, stopping to reload, stomping again. Pop. Pop. The teacher didn’t even have a chance to ask why he was there. I hear stomping in the breezeway connecting garage to kitchen. I’m in the box and the box is in the closet and I hold my breath; he’s coming in here too! He followed me from school and now he’s coming to get me. I might puke. It’s not safe to come out. “Rachel, are you here?” he calls, then louder, “Rachel!” He knows my name. It’s a trap. My screaming classmates cried, running to the door, to the windows. Pop. Pop. Pop. I can still hear them. My paper hands reach up and cover my paper ears. I was lucky there was a box in the classroom, a box like this. It was turned upside down. And I folded myself into a swan and ducked my paper head under my paper wing, trembling. The popping stopped. “Is anyone alive in here?” I didn’t budge. “It’s safe now.” I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to see what I knew was outside the box. And then I had to and I saw blood, so much blood, my friends’ blood. I spread my swan wings and flew, I didn’t look at anyone or anything else; I just flew home over the chaos, over the ambulances and police cars and panicked people to my home, to this box and folded myself into a flower, sprouting roots right through the cardboard, through the floor, right through the earth, my heart still pounding. “Rachel?” I can hear his voice breaking. Then, “I was at the school. I couldn’t find her. They don’t know if she’s one of them, they haven’t all been identified yet. So I came home, but she’s not here either. I don’t know where she is.”

Home. I push aside my petals and peek out the closet door. He’s sitting on the couch, my father, his face in his hands, the phone still lit, lying on the floor next to his feet. 

 “Dad?” I can’t fight back my tears any longer; they gush from my eyes. I’m a girl again, not a chrysanthemum and my petals scatter as I stumble into his arms and they fold around me.

Susan Israel’s work has been published in Blink-Ink, Backwards Trajectory, Does It Have Pockets, MacQueen’s Quinterly, JAKE, 50 Word Stories, Bright Flash Literary Review, Flash Boulevard, among others. She lives in Connecticut.

Breaking News: Barbie Eats Trump During Baltimore Pride Fest by Chrissy Stegman

On By okaydonkey7In poetry1 Comment
What else was left for her to do? Giant in pink,
her laughter clanging down Charles Street
like bells rung wild to the dystopian melody.

She was a blaze in glorious sequins. Swirls
through the crowd, her skirt sliced the air
like ribbons of rampage, her manicured hands filled
with noise and want. She saw him, glitterless,
small in the gold chair he made for himself.
A throne as yellow as piss. The crowd parted
like the sound of rain. She moved toward him,
her shadow a blossom of organza fire in the setting sun.
She plucked him like feral lint from a coat lapel.
She flicked him, a spinning trinket tossed
to gravity’s obsequious gamble & caught him
mid-fall. Her mouth opened into a cave of cherry
and fuchsia, a holler of lipstick

When he fell, she swallowed him whole.

Love did this: the riot of it. Love
for the smashing, the making,
the breaking. Love
for our country and the streets
lit like a sky of teeth.

Chrissy Stegman is a poet/writer from Baltimore, Maryland. Recent work has appeared in: UCity Review, Rejection Letters, Gone Lawn, Gargoyle Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Stone Circle Review, Fictive Dream, Inkfish, 5 Minutes, Libre, and BULL. She is a 2x BOTN and Pushcart Prize nominee. www.chrissystegman.com.

[When a man and a] by Jason Fraley

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When a man and a woman love each other, they can opt (i) for sexual
relations or (ii) to memorialize their feelings in a securities contract.

English makes it difficult to gender a piece of paper.

Even though I babble Latin, the doctor assuages my parents’ fears,
assures them I’m indeed living.

My parents, perhaps biased, repeat that I’m the most beautiful legal
document in the whole world.

After leaving the hospital, they take me to the exchange.

My crib is a plastic sheet tucked into a writing desk drawer.

A bespeckled man with a milky beard gazes from atop a wooden
crate. He predicts that, one day, I will be worth 30 pearls, an entire
bundle of flax, or six counterfeit rubies.

My parents are keen on those three outcomes.

What my parents learn is that securities contracts are not
circumcised. They are sliced into tranches.

Some price my finest details: a stylized T to start a paragraph, an
anachronistic diagram of a human skeleton.

Some speculate that a thumb-smudged page number or struck-
through drafting error will solicit a turquoise shaving or heron
feather at some later date.

Bidders disperse when they must pay more than quail eggshells for
my errata.

My parents are aghast as I’m confettied to the highest bidder.

Think of tranches like trenches.

A trench may be a rut, channel, furrow, or cut depending on when a
shovel breaks or Orion hides his bicep behind cloud cover.

A trench doesn’t become an excavation just because that’s where
the wind hides confetti squares appraised as worthless.

But that is one reason.

Jason Fraley is a native West Virginian who lives, works, and periodically writes in Columbus, OH. Current and prior publications include Salamander Magazine, Barrow Street, Jet Fuel Review, Quarter After Eight, West Trade Review, and Pine Hills Review.

giving all my heart to the dirt sprayed across my hands by Fabiola Cepeda

On By okaydonkey7In flash fictionLeave a comment

Sometimes I like to draw on my teeth, but not today. I do not like to draw on my teeth today because yesterday Luis ate dirt. The day before Luis was sprayed across my hands and my shirt; I had to dig a hole in my backyard. I said a prayer for Luis, my friend Luis. Today I put my pillows on the top shelf in my closet, I am giving up sleep for him.

My reasons for anything are always temporary, so it doesn’t matter if Luis killed the rabbit, even when he bit him. I miss my old life, when we would skip over rocks on the river, dip our feet in, get a cold. I miss being frozen in our room, unable to move, forgetting what it felt like to feel normal and healthy, wishing for more than anything to be warm and healthy again.

My feet slipped from under me during class while I fell asleep with my head down. looking out the window, my friend Sarah asked me if I was okay. I do not know how to tell her that I do not have time, I gave time up for Luis.

The rain falls all over the place, and my CD keeps skipping in my ears. Today is All Saints Day, I dressed up as, well it doesn’t matter, now that you can’t see it. My mom made me dress up for All Saints Day, I tried really hard not to celebrate it without you, I know it was your favorite. No one really likes All Saints Day. Mom and Dad’s breath comes from the same bed now, they gasp and are curious; I forget how thin the walls are here. I am going to stop crying all the time, I want to be as alive as one could try to be, even if that means doing the bad things. I want to hear people say, “That’s not like you! Luis would be disappointed,” but I know they are lying.

On the underside of a fog you are so lonely. Alone, with dirt sprayed across your face, wedged between your skin. I don’t want to be shot brushing my teeth with you. Alone in the modesty of our gums, waxed with baking soda. It was easier to avoid a greater sadness than whatever this is, I guess that’s why I did it. Why I buried you in the backyard, sliced up, full of juice.

It is still raining and you have stolen the warmth from this earth. But someday secretly, I will work on bringing you back up. That way we can walk into the theater, hand in hand; see the tiny stage hold up the great fools. Their shadows bouncing behind their eyes. And yes, it is all necessary, to see multiples of you through my backyard window.

The leaves are a yellow and it reminds me of you, and even though the road is closed I go down in. taking in the trees, searching for you. It is hard to find you in the dust that fills the air. I wish I could have looked at you a little longer, Luis. I know I must go but my ears hurt from wind blowing. The new is not important to me anymore, how could all of this keep happening when you are gone. You’ve been far from land for too long, just come back.

I could almost see you floating in class today. I didn’t cry, it was an awkward mask I forced myself to wear. Tall people do not seem to understand, Luis, the destruction of moldering at a wooden altar. At the funeral, others laughed. In your towel my knees killed grass, feet were brown and shone through the crack that ran up the wall. I got thrown to the tub, but I leaked out of my knee and made my escape to your grave. But they twisted me back and lives carried on.

My feet hurt from walking across streets for you. I can’t go go home anymore and sleep. I don’t think you would have this Luis, but I can’t keep squinting my eyes just so I can remember you. It is hard Luis, to eat when I think I see you on the kitchen table. It is even worse when I go to Abuela’s house and see multiples of you swaying in the wind. I go drawing on my teeth and smearing my nose on the couch. I don’t miss you anymore, you were just a lemon, Luis.

Fabiola Cepeda is a Mexican-American Writer from San Antonio, Texas. Her work has been published in Gravel, Cargoes, and The Hunger Journal. She is currently pursuing a degree in creative writing and studio art from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. You can find her on Instagram @whatfabifound and @fabiolaleyendolibros.

App City by Rachel Myers

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welcome to [city]
please observe all traffic laws in [city]
park only in these designated lots
or garages       pay here
or on the app

the machines
will serve you
they are here to help you
we gave them mouths to say

pay for your parking here
pay for your parking here

observe them in rows     dominoes
echoing each other     activated
by motion   please enter
your license plate     that is not
from this state
you are a robot
try again     try again

it would be better
to download the app     where
you must also prove     you are not
a robot       the robot asking you
can differentiate

you may not
park elsewhere
you may not
park here         unless you pay
at the machine     that speaks
but again
it would be better
to download the app
which is different from the app
for [other city] and [other city]

you must pay       on the app
or at the machines       that say
you can pay   but cannot
recognize you   you
with your movements   your ability
to select     which pictures
have a bicycle in them

Rachel Lauren Myers is a poet from northern Nevada. Her work can be found in Red Ogre Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She is an assistant editor at MEMEZINE. She recently relocated to Massachusetts with her pug, Watson, and can’t get over all the lush greenery. Find her on Instagram and Bluesky at @hellostarbuck.

Fireflies by Rina Olsen

On By okaydonkey7In flash fictionLeave a comment

Last night I had the dream that my father had had nearly twenty years ago now. But it couldn’t have been the same dream because it wasn’t me on the railroad tracks. It was my daughter.

In this dream I was following her from behind. Far behind. I wanted to hurry. Or at least call out to her. But for some reason I couldn’t.

She was on the track that ran over the river into the woods. The west bank. When she was little I used to bring her out here. We’d take pebbles and rocks home. Pretty ones to decorate the house with. Or she’d pick some leaves and make crayon rubbings of them. My father used to bring me here as a kid often. The last time we were here my daughter was at summer camp and the sky looked like it wanted to rain and he asked me about her college plans. 

She stopped coming with me when she was about fourteen but I still keep those rubbings with me.

In my dream I could see the riverbank through the spaces between the tracks. Pretty spot. Must’ve been my second year of college when we came down here one August. Me and this guy. He took me one night to see the fireflies and while we were sitting on the rusted track he caught one for me so I could hold it before it flew away. Just sat there on my fingertips blinking on and off. They were everywhere that night. Fallen stars among leaf litter. Yellow eyes blinking. I shivered and he put his arm around me and said Cold? and even though I shook my head he pulled me closer and squeezed. So I rested my head on his shoulder and looked up at the outline of his jaw against the sky. He looked down at me and our faces were so close that I could smell the fruity aftertaste of vape and then the taste of peaches was in my mouth hot and damp and then we were on the tracks and then all I knew was soft peach flesh and yellow blinking eyes all around us.

When my father asked how it happened I said nothing. Must’ve thought he could get more out of me than my mother could. But no one got anything out of me. No one ever gets anything out of me if I don’t want them to. All the goddamn time  he was pestering me what are you gonna do what are you gonna do what are you gonna do but I was barely listening because by then I was shut up for good.

In my dream I followed the tracks out over the water. The smell of brine and shit and suntan lotion wafted up. Water brown and stinky as ever. Sailboats dotted it like flecks of white paint on brown canvas. That’s how I knew that guy actually. I used to go sailing all the time before I dropped out. Out with friends in the sun. Tanned arms short white skirts fishing rods. I never told my parents about the drinking. Always drinking back then. Bottles littered the deck and we’d throw them overboard. We threw a lot of things overboard. One time when he was on the boat I drank too much and vomited. Didn’t get to the railing in time and it got all over his feet and my feet but he still held my hair back for me. I can see it in this dream: ribbons of orange trailing after one of the sailboats. Probably his boat. Maybe he’s holding back another woman’s hair now.

In the dream my daughter was already in the forest but I was still over the east bank. Litter flashing in the sand: beer bottles soda cans cigarette packs. High school. Sneaking out at lunch to drink smoke do whatever. The intimacy of a leather steering wheel spinning through my hands at midday. The first burn of Bud Lite on my throat. One time on the sand where the grass springs up nice and tall a classmate put his hand up my skirt and I let him. I never told my father about that. This was around the time he had the dream of me crossing the railroad tracks and him following behind and in the morning he said something like Hey you doing okay? But there’s no way he knew about any of that. I knew when my daughter started smoking but I never said anything. She doesn’t know I know. But I know.

In my dream I spotted my initials on a wood railroad tie where the tracks met the east bank. I’d carved them when I was thirteen or fourteen. The letters used to be a fresh sandy color. In my dream they were as dull and faded as the river. Hungry flowers crawled over the rusted steel. Pickerelweed milkweed marigold. They smelled like my mother’s laundry detergent. As a toddler I would bury myself in the laundry and listen to my mother call my name Where are you where are you answer me and when she was near crying I would pop out and run to hug her. When my daughter was born I always folded the laundry immediately so she couldn’t do the same.

In my dream I was in the woods now. My daughter far ahead. Wait. I wanted to call to her. Wait for me. The fireflies were starting to come out and for some reason I could sense that something terribly wrong was going to happen. Dread grinding against my stomach. Wait for me.

I watched her crouch on the tracks. I wanted to move forward but all I could do was watch from behind which meant I couldn’t see what she was crouching over.

What are you doing?

Wait for me.

Come back!

She stood and straightened. Then: I’m fine Mom. But don’t look. It’s a secret.

Rina Olsen, a rising high school senior from Guam, is the author of Third Moon Passing (Atmosphere Press, June 2023) and The Water Stricken (Atmosphere Press, October 2024). An alumna of the 2024 YoungArts program, Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, her work has been recognized by the John Locke Institute, Sejong Cultural Society, Carl Sandburg Home, and Guam History Day. Her fiction pieces “Bataya Slums, 1971” in Milk Candy Review and “Skeletons in the Closet” in Okay Donkey were long listed for Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions in 2024. When she isn’t writing, Rina can be found playing the piano, looking up obscure history, or with her nose in a good book. Find out more at her website: https://rinaolsen.com.

The Summer I Watched “Boyfriend takes care of you while sick” ASMR Videos on Repeat by Danielle Shorr

On By okaydonkey7In poetry1 Comment

My loneliness had teeth, no eyes, and legs
that walked me back to bed at all hours of the day.
The room spun only when I was conscious.
Exhaustion replaced all other natural desires
and it was the best I had ever looked.
The first medication was wrong, the second and third, too.
The days were a shrinking room,
and I had eaten all of the doors.
So I watched Youtube videos where a man
I didn’t know pretended to nurse me back to health
through my phone. I can’t remember the circumstances
of the discovery, only that the videos found me
when I needed them to. A fraud, a two-timer,
I went on dates where I couldn’t make eye contact,
then went home to the arms of my laptop’s screen.
Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.
You’ll be better before you know it.
A hand reached out holding a spoonful of chicken soup
and I opened my mouth. His fingers scratched
the top of the camera and I felt it on my head.
He rubbed my shoulders and cleared the tears
forming in the pockets of my eyelids.
How did he know I was crying?
I watched the videos like porn but without shame.
What we did here in the bedroom was
nobody’s business but ours. No one would think to ask,
so I had nothing to tell.
He would fix me before anyone knew I was dead.
He would keep me until it was safe to send me off,
until I could reenter the world and want to stay there

Danielle Shorr is a professor of creative writing at Chapman University. Winner of the Touchstone Literary Magazine Debut Prize in Nonfiction, a finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Non-fiction, and nominee for The Pushcart Prize 2022 & 2023, and the Best of the Net 2022 & 2023, her work has appeared in The Florida Review, Driftwood Press, The New Orleans Review, and others. Find her at: @danielleshorr.

Marriage by Amber Burke

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Dark Circles

The husband and wife my husband and I met at the dinner party both have undereye circles so dark they are almost purple. Even though they smiled often enough, the dark rings gave the couple a haunted, intimidating air, as if they had glimpsed the end of the world, and we didn’t talk to them much. We talked about them—or rather, their dark circles—later that night in bed. We wondered if the dark circles could have predated the marriage and even sparked the initial attraction between the future husband and wife, causing each to recognize in the other a second self. Or perhaps they came after the marriage and are being caused by the same factor; the meals the husband and wife share could be missing the same important nutrient, or the same city noise or streetlight could be keeping them both awake, or they could be worried about or grieving for the same person. Or perhaps they have caused them in each other—the dark circles arose from whatever they are in the habit of doing together that is keeping them up: fighting, or making love, or reading out loud, or speculating late into the night about couples they hardly know.

A Small Danger Remains

I am no seamstress, but no one would see the rough stitches I was hash-marking in the ripped lining of my husband’s coat pocket, through which he’d lost many things—money, keys, his phone. When I was nearly finished, I lost my needle. I’d set it down to adjust the coat on my lap and when I reached for it, it jumped off the table where it had been resting. I couldn’t see where it went. This is why people have pincushions, I thought, but I didn’t have a pincushion. It was remarkable really that I had a needle and thread that matched the coat well enough.

I thought the needle was likeliest to have landed on the coat itself. I inspected it, then got up and flapped it over the chair where I’d been sitting, in the corner of the living room by the light. Nothing. I inspected the chair, and then the floor under and around it. I didn’t see the needle anywhere.

My first impulse was to get my husband to help me look. But I thought it unlikely that he would find it; his eyes are exactly as bad as mine, and I am usually the one who finds things. I thought it more likely that he would upbraid me for my carelessness; he could sit on the needle, or the dogs could step on it, and was I going to be the one to take them to the vet if they did? If we didn’t find it, from then on, every time we went to the living room, he’d inquire about the needle and lower himself onto the couch with exaggerated wariness. After long enough, it might turn into a joke; wherever he sat, he might say, “Ouch!” and I would laugh but also feel something poking me. I decided to take my chances; if the needle was somewhere I couldn’t find it, perhaps it was also somewhere it wouldn’t hurt anyone. I took another needle, finished my sewing, and this second needle I made sure to put away neatly.

Later that night, when my husband was showering, I looked for the lost needle with the help of a flashlight, to no avail. I put on my reading glasses and crawled around the living room with my nose very close to the floor. No needle. The following week, I expanded my search field, even flipping books over and shaking them and tapping the dirt around potted plants fruitlessly. That was last month. More recently, I’ve checked for the needle in the fruit bowls on the kitchen counter, between the sheets of our bed, and in the cupholders in the car where all manner of things appear, but not the needle. We sat outside on the porch last night, and I caught myself scanning the early spring grass, looking for something sharp.

No one has so far been injured. The days are already lengthening. It will be summer soon, and in the sharper light, the glint of the needle may be easier to see.

Miracle Grow

My husband planted grass seed but would water it only once a week, and then give it only a quick sprinkle, saying it is drought-resistant grass. I too am ambivalent about grass, but I pitied the grass he so carefully planted, which, after the spring rains were over, quickly began yellowing under the hot sun. So I began watering it generously when he was gone, which he was for work, a few nights every week. Now he thinks the drought-resistant grass grows magnificently without water and is sure we do not need to water it even one day a week.

Amber Burke graduated from Yale and the Writing Seminars MFA Program at Johns Hopkins University. She now teaches writing and yoga at UNM-Taos. Her work has been published in in swamp pink, The Sun, Michigan Quarterly Review, Flyway, X-R-A-Y, Quarterly West, and Superstition Review, among other places. She is also a regular contributor to Yoga International and co-author of the yoga ebook, Yoga for Common Conditions.

They Look Dead, but They are Just Dreaming by Amanda Chiado

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There is an ant infestation at the laundromat. The little legged beauty marks are marching toward a large hole in the wall. I start a load of whites then get in line with the ants. Upon arriving at the hole, I gaze inside where I see a newborn baby covered in stickiness. The ants work hard at cleaning the infant, dropping crumbs and water droplets into its mouth. The child looks well-cared for, but I have no children of my own, so I don’t know the full extent of rearing a tiny person. A pregnant terminator arrives, “The baby has done its job. Everyone must evacuate.” I go next door and buy a pink frosted donut and a bottle of chocolate milk. I watch as they freeze the ants into immobility with ice guns and throw them into large ant farms hoisted onto 18 wheelers. I read a tabloid about the protein packed insect food of the future until the washer chirps from across the parking lot. The crime scene tape is still whipping in the wind like sweet strands of honey. The ants look dead behind the glass. I am sure they are just dreaming.

Amanda Chiado is the author of Vitiligod (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has most recently appeared in Rhino, The Pinch Journal, and The Offing. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart & Best of the Net. She is the Director of Arts Education at the San Benito County Arts Council, is a California Poet in the Schools, and edits for Jersey Devil Press. www.amandachiado.com