Good Luck: Episode Sixteen

Rae said something. I couldn’t hear. 7th was too loud. She looked back over her shoulder to hear my answer, so I just said, “Yeah.”

Her hair was getting long again, curled up at the neckline. Each boot step clicked in a nice musical way.

She motioned for us to cross. The sidewalk got wider and it was okay to walk side by side with her, people had all the room in the world here.

The bars were packed with people. The restaurants had full tables. The jails were at max capacity too. The bookstores and churches were empty.

[An excerpt from WRITING, WRITTEN which is now available from Fantagraphics Books. Order your copy here.]

Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Sarah McColl. Her debut memoir, Joy Enough, is available from Liveright Publishing.

McColl’s essays have appeared in Paris Review, McSweeney’s, StoryQuarterly, and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, where she was named the 2017 Mary Carswell Fellow, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Wrangell Mountains Center.

She teaches creative writing and is based in Los Angeles, California.

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I Have a Terrible Feeling is a series of weekly drawings, cartoons, and sketches by poet Adam Soldofsky.

And Every

He met his friend at the shop where his friend works and his friend asked him if he wanted to meet him at his house after work. After work, he met up with his friend at his friend’s house and at his friend’s house, his friend asked if he’d want to meet up the next day at the shop where he works. So, the next day, he met his friend at the shop where his friend works and his friend asked him if he wanted to meet him at his house after work.

Yeah, see you then. Each time.

He doesn’t mind anything and it’s easy this way.

Good Luck: Episode Fifteen

We’re watching the movie The Apartment. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. We’re watching it because I didn’t know what an apartment was. Didn’t I feel stupid when I found out I’d been living in one for 14 years.

Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Madhuri Vijay. Her debut novel, The Far Field, is available now from Grove Press.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, Vijay was born in Bangalore. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her writing has appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative Magazine and Salon, among other publications. The Far Field is her first book.

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UKULELE MUSIC

Two types of people occupy a cloud—

One off-punk, the other oversharing.

An enormous scaffold out of nowhere shears

The cloud in two, they drift apart.

That’s sort of what it’s like moving cities

In your smart blue jacket, making enemies

At breakfast over hash browns, onions, brash opinions.

Morning bubbles burst above the marsh.

St. Augustine is the oldest city in the U.S.

They’ve got the fountain of youth

I almost made it down there once

But there was a hurricane

And I was driving my ex’s car

And she got scared so we turned around

And went back to the hotel

And that was more than 10 years ago

Now I’m older and she’s gone and her car is gone too

But I was thinking about St. Augustine again this morning

My wife and I were doing the crossword puzzle in bed

And I was wondering if we’ll ever have a kid

And the answer was 86-down

I Have a Terrible Feeling is a series of weekly drawings, cartoons, and sketches by poet Adam Soldofsky.

Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Peter Stenson. His new novel Thirty Seven is available from Dzanc Books. It is the official February pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.

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Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.

Good Luck: Episode Fourteen

Mom is the little guy. The youngest. Then Jonathan is born and he becomes the little guy. Seven kids. Jonathan, Robin, Lee, Elaine, Billy, Jefferey, Sandy, all of them have their time as the little guy.

Dad is the little guy, too. And stays that way. He has two older brothers, Joe and Jimmy.

Everyone goes to school. Grows up. Watches black and white TV. And then watches color TV. Dad is not my dad yet, he’s skinny. Mom is not my mom yet, she’s skinny in bell-bottoms, and feathered hair.

Dad wears wire framed glasses, has a red beard, builds a muscle car, and meets my mother.

She’s a little bit country. He’s a little bit rock ’n’ roll. They split the difference, move to Brick Town.

They get fried seafood somewhere.

If I ever said I loved Francine it was to get her to set the kitchen knife down on the countertop before something awful happened. To her, I was the “looney.” Especially after she rocked back a row of wine coolers.

“You got a sick head,” she stammered, swinging the blade at me. “When you gonna get help now?”

“Fran,” I said, trying to grab her arm. “I said I love you. You see? I just said it, again.”

Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Brad Phillips. His new story collection, Essays and Fictions, is available from Tyrant Books.

The late Anthony Bourdain calls it: “Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing. [Phillips] peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul.”

Born in 1974, Phillips is also an accomplished visual artist  known for dark work that engages with themes of eroticism, depression, and mortality. His paintings display stylistic breadth, from text-based to photorealist, referring in many cases directly to his daily life. He lives in Toronto.

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paul millsap

the sun exploded one night and invented a bunch of new colors on earth

and i was like hey, that’s pretty alright

me and jackson are watching some basketball

and paul millsap had a double-double

and i was like ‘nice’ and jackson was like ‘nice’