Tag: Meg Pokrass

Meg Pokrass: “On My Road”

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On My Road

You shuddered and I shuddered and I smiled because of gravity. I moved you with my hands, and then we went to the movies. Full-screen, popcorn, real butter. You say we’ve sinned and our faces have dropped. I laugh and tell you I’ll pick your face up for you. You say you gave up women for an old yellow dog and magazines and a bad lower back. I say I wear a plastic-certainty mask when I greet the young pharmacist who knows my driver’s-license name. Your handwriting was here on my table last week. I’m not giving up on this.

About the Author: Meg Pokrass is the author of 8 collections of flash fiction.

Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Unfolding Succulent” (2022)

Meg Pokrass: “Housesitter”

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Housesitter

When I talk about this housesitting gig, which I don’t often, people smile and stare at their shoelaces. They wrap things up, label me “once spunky, now sad”. His cats are throwing up everywhere. It is raining. The problem is that I am standing in his kitchen; in an apartment on a sinister street on a landfill-ridden plot covered in drab apartment complexes. The town is called Baggageport. Not worse than Intercourse, Pennsylvania or Hell, Michigan. Sighing and smoking and huddling there next to the cats… peeking out at the neat world.

About the Author: Meg Pokrass is the author of 8 collections of flash fiction.

Image Credit: Harris & Ewing “Cats” (1923) Public domain photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

Meg Pokrass: “Pilot”

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Pilot

According to him he was a pilot, owned a few race cars, and chewed ice. Simple confessions. He was a “chewer” and it did not mean anything, just something to say.

Near Christmas, the cat was tired of her dating stories. She didn’t want to bore the cat anymore. So, she poured it on a bit, to get one of them to stop playing around and to take her somewhere. Why not the pilot? It was time to tell a few stories to a human, and relieve the cat. She’d do so in a restaurant, with or without ice.

“I prefer to live on the edge,” he said in a text. She almost said “most people are not given a choice”.

It seemed to her a moment of mental decline could happen when a pilot believes that he can fly over real people. Online dating is exactly this, she thought, staring up at the profile pictures of such sad, old children.

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About the Author: Meg Pokrass writes stories she doesn’t know she is writing.

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More by Meg Pokrass:

Blueberry Blue

Neurology

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Image Credit: [Untitled photo, possibly related to: “Duster” plane spraying insecticide over a field of beans.] from The Library of Congress

Meg Pokrass: “Neurology”

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Neurology

When he walks in I’m crushed
and loved. My foot grabs the pain,
happy for his entrance lines
thick medical folder as prop.
Monthly he opens the door to my face.
If this ends
I will never get better. He writes
with his red pen all over my heart.
How long will this go on? I ask.
For a long time, he says
pain bringing its own bench

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About the Author: Meg Pokrass is the author of five flash fiction collections and a book of prose poetry, Cellulose Pajamas, for which she received the Blue Light Book Award. Her work has been widely internationally anthologized, most recently in New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018), Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015) and The Best Small Fictions2018, 2019. She serves as Founding Co-Editor of Best Microfiction 2020 and teaches flash fiction online and in person.

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More by Meg Pokrass:

Blueberry Blue

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Image Credit: Photo collage adapted from a public domain image from Gray’s Anatomy

Revisiting 2020: Our 50 Most Popular Posts of the Year

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Dear As It Ought To Be Readers,

 

Despite everything 2020 threw at us, AIOTB Magazine was fortunate to receive so many brilliant poems, essays, interviews, and book reviews from writers around the world. Below, I have assembled the 50 most popular posts of the year based on the amount of hits they received. I know that few people will look back at 2020 with fondness, but maybe reviewing these posts from the year is a reminder of the resilience people have to continue to create in a crisis, and to channel the anxiety of the world into writing that connects us.

AIOTB Magazine was perhaps the only constant I had in 2020 that began and ended the year exactly the same, and completely intact. I have all of you contributors and readers to thank for that. Thanks for keeping me sane and connected to a community of writers when I most needed stability, creativity, and human connection in my life.

I have no idea what 2021 will look like, but if you keep reading and supporting each other’s work, you’ll at least have three new pieces a week on AIOTB Magazine to count on.

 

-Chase Dimock
Managing Editor

 

Poetry

Omobolanle Alashe:

Jason Baldinger:

Rusty Barnes:

Jean Biegun:

Victor Clevenger:

John Dorsey:

Ajah Henry Ekene:

Loisa Fenichell:

Jeff Hardin:

John Haugh:

Mike James:

Jennifer R. Lloyd:

John Macker:

Tessah Melamed:

THE NU PROFIT$ OF P/O/E/T/I/C DI$CHORD:

Hilary Otto:

Dan Overgaard:

Rob Plath:

Daniel Romo:

Diana Rosen:

Damian Rucci:

Leslie M. Rupracht:

Anna Saunders:

Sheila Saunders:

Alan Semerdjian:

Delora Sales Simbajon:

Nathanael Stolte:

Timothy Tarkelly

William Taylor Jr.:

Bunkong Tuon:

Peggy Turnbull:

Brian Chander Wiora:

 

 

Reviews

Chase Dimock:

Mike James:

Arthur Hoyle:

 

 

Interviews

Chase Dimock:

 

Nonfiction

Brian Connor:

Cody Sexton:

 

 

Micro Fiction

Meg Pokrass:

Meg Pokrass: “Blueberry Blue”

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Blueberry Blue

At sixteen I lay on the floor of my closet. I listened to music that reminded me of him. I ate salad and danced alone in there. Imagining. My eyes were bright blue blueberries, my mother told me no one was perfect, the salad of my hair spilled out of my crocheted hats. My secret closet life. Making blueberry pancakes while thinking about his body, about the world that was perfect with him in it, the world he made ripe.

At sixteen, living in my closet, thinking of him next to my music.

At sixteen, the world said nothing bloomed for long.

At sixteen, blooming. Because he could swallow me whole.

 

 

About the Author: Meg Pokrass is the author of five flash fiction collections and a book of prose poetry, Cellulose Pajamas, for which she received the Blue Light Book Award. Her work has been widely internationally anthologized, most recently in New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018), Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015) and The Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019. She serves as Founding Co-Editor of Best Microfiction 2020 and teaches flash fiction online and in person.

 

Image Credit: Detail from the cover of “Rayner’s Berry Book” courtesy of The Biodiversity Heritage Library, Creative Commons 2.0

Sex In Siberia

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Sex In Siberia

by Meg Pokrass

My imaginary man lives in Siberia. We touch down on each other like  helicopters. I smile, move my mouth around him—offer a warming hut, a place to explode.  When he bursts, storm clouds open.

Southern California boasts mild, featureless people. The Weather Channel’s talking heads, all botoxed and baby-fatted in their cheeks, ramble on about radical snowstorms in New York State. I paint leaves, collect Styrofoam in buckets. Driving downtown for wrapping paper, I count the fake blonds wearing two dollar Santa Claus hats.

My parents divorced and nobody yells anymore, but that is no longer important. I want a Siberian life, a Siberian husband. One whose hair changes from brown to light.

My dog seems worried, and so he and I take long walks. Sweat trickles down my back. The dog pants miserably. I promise him that someday, we’ll skate alongside a large man who loves Labs.

In December, I slump into bed early, imagine what it will be like—Siberian sex. Better than any other kind—so cold outside, so warm under the covers. I ball up socks and rub them where the man would go. We’re there, and he is teaching me how to taste snow.

 

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Meg Pokrass is the author of Damn Sure Right, a collection of stories. Her second collection, Happy Upside Down, will be released in the fall of  2013. Meg’s work appears in PANK, McSweeney’s, The Literarian, storySouth, Smokelong Quarterly, Gigantic, Kitty Snacks, Wigleaf, The Rumpus, Yalobusha Review, Gargoyle, and Roadside Curiosities: Stories About American Pop Culture (University of Leipzig Press in conjunction with Picador, 2013). Information about her work can be found here: http://www.megpokrass.com.