Author: phoebejournal

Use Your Spoon

On the tips of bare toes, arm stretched so far it hurt, I placed the final red brick. This was the top of my tower. I had more Legos, but I could only reach so high. I stepped back to see what I had...

Read More

How the Lake Saved Me

Nonfiction Rachel Toliver

I used to be a young girl, only 18, who had left the East—where I had neither much sinned nor been much sinned to—but had been often tired, and often...

Read More

Three Hearts

Wilma clutched her empty lunch sack and watched the jellyfish bob and sway out of rhythm with the Andean flute music the aquarium played on Mondays. It was her seventh visit to the jellies exhibit in...

Read More

Ithaca

Sometimes she found herself in a yellow room. She sat by the window or by the table or in a rolling chair. Just a gravel courtyard outside and a strip of brilliant sky. The smell of Lysol and...

Read More

Service

I do and do not know how it came to this. Earlier today, he trapped a squirrel in his yard. He put the trap in the cab of his truck, put a blanket over the trap so the animal wouldn’t be...

Read More

from GLOCK CHORUS

Poetry Joyelle McSweeney

My target’s face it was pockmarked

tho hidden by a sack of ice

tho hidden like a crooked account book

fell open where the hammer hit twice...

Read More

Group Dynamics

Connor walked over to the glass double-doors of Jackie Jump-Up’s and searched inside for a glimpse of Suzie. He could make out the outlines of the mechanical animal band, still and silent after an...

Read More

Shoplifting

First, find a tube of lipstick—a good color for you, sure, but more importantly one that fits your palm and pocket. Pick it up. Pick up some eye shadow, mascara, lip gloss—whatever. Survey...

Read More

The Case Against Dr. Smetana

-Dr. Smetana teaches no courses. In his entire tenure, he has taught exactly one: a Fall 2002 introductory survey titled “Eromathematics: Machines in Love.” The department file lists twelve...

Read More

Otron and His Dark Horse

Sometimes, I feel like writing my own obituary. I grab hold of a bottle and spin in circles, the living room’s recessed lighting hiding the wrinkles on my sleep deprived face. Later, I jump off the...

Read More