“Steve Barichko” is a pattern the universe is maintaining that will one day be flipped off like a lightswitch, recycled like a crashing wave back into the ocean, only to crash again as another wave in another time and place. His work has most recently appeared in Daily Drunk Magazine.
[woman]
she says she’s no prude
one hand may be on
the divine but i’m touching
myself with the other
always gets a laugh
but it was twice before
her body gave up the child
now she sings hoarsely
or not at all
her orgasm a permanent apology
rave reviews from recent lovers
if a bit perplexed
wake and your tea will be ready
she keeps you
to yourself but binds you
to her arm song of solomon style
she handwrites recipes
renames wild mushrooms she reminds you
of your guitar but look at her
too long and she’ll say
just keep talking
i’m an embarrassment
a false opening
coals smoldering
a setup a hungry trap
a perfume tease
she really speaks that way
how could she not
still hyphenating g-d still so close
to all the rituals
ancient food the dead and gone the flame
to take up covering mirrors
foraging hogweed for soup
knocking on wood
spitting at good and at evil
she has prophet dreams
of flowering acorns
she dreams one foot in the river
but both shoes off
one night she dreams of healing
returning as judge and jury
setting her price
careful about who she teaches her name
about who gets to see her after a shower
binding her hair
Orpheus
you wouldn’t believe what they say about me
i’m newly widowed well true but
also that i’ve tuned to open g
only play the blues or i’m with the accuser
in the asphodel fields watching the shades
that i’m a fag now because i lost you
or a perv or dead
ripped apart by some dyonisian cult
beheaded and sent singing
down the river
there are pretty stories too
by chance i was struck by lightning
buried in an unmarked grave
where nightingales flock
singing constantly
but the truth is i’ve been picking
at songs i know
all the ones you loved
they talk about rivers and that’s true
i still love them
i’ve been going to the styx
since i charmed them all
helicon and hebrus too
i’ve been cupping my hands in the current
not sure why but you can imagine
being cinched at the waist
by a river of course you don’t know
what should happen
last trip out i had the thought
to be mute means to be acknowledged
hiding in plain sight
i realized i might want that and not oblivion
i think this means i’m doing well
but you always knew better than me
about everything
so if this is still about you just tell me
Making Beef Bourguignon
lights off
except cycline
above kitchen sink
gulp of wine
simmering
leaning on counter
hour three
more than a billion years ago
two immense black holes circled eachother
until they collided and merged
a cataclysm so intense it sent ripples soaring
through the fabric of space and time and
only this morning we registered the tremble
my wife has been standing in the doorway
in bra and panties waiting for me to catch her eye
finally she asks what are you thinking and for some reason
i say i had been thinking that i have seen five black bears
in my lifetime all close enough to kill me and that
i should start naming them and she moves on me with a smirk says how do you know it wasn’t the same bear
From the Editor:
We hope that readers receive In Parentheses as a medium through which the evolution of human thought can be appreciated, nurtured and precipitated. It will present a dynamo of artistic expression, journalism, informal analysis of our daily world, entertainment of ideas considered lofty and criticism of today’s popular culture. The featured content does not follow any specific ideology except for that of intellectual expansion of the masses.
Founded in late 2011, In Parentheses prides itself upon analysis of the current condition of intelligence in the minds of these young people, and building a hypothesis for one looming question: what comes after Post-Modernism?
The idea for this magazine stems from a simple conversation regarding the aforementioned question, which drew out the need to identify our generation’s place in literary history.
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By In Parentheses in Volume 6
80 pages, published 10/15/2020
