by Junpei Tarashi | Jan 27, 2023 | 2022 October
The aftermath makes me a housekeeper. From behind the radiator, I sweep clumps of dirt, cut hairs, dead things that cling to me like lint. The pipes of history have burst and now it stains the ceiling and drips down the walls. I catch it in buckets and toss in torn...
by Junpei Tarashi | Jan 2, 2023 | 2022 October
Katie and I often do laundry at the same time. She says that laundry will be her death while filling a front loader. Her husband would let the clothes stink until he couldn’t go to work. Even then. She knows that I’m gay since my underwear told her behind my back. I...
by Junpei Tarashi | Jan 2, 2023 | 2022 September
Leaning against the cold porcelain sink, attempting to open the gates to a new day, I stare into the mirrored face, eyes still lifeless, skin colorless and hair matted on the side that met the pillow, just like my father’s hair when he’d fallen hard asleep on the...
by Junpei Tarashi | Jan 2, 2023 | 2022 September
Tommy says that his umbilical cord shriveled up and fell off before he was even born; that he came out of the womb with it tied into a sailors’ knot around his pinky. We were all so impressed. How had he lost it that early? I’m not that gullible anymore. My mom used...
by Junpei Tarashi | Jan 2, 2023 | 2022 July
The uppity cemetery thinks that it will have me completely. Like a lover who put me in the coffin of his need. I leave the coffin and head for a bar which makes killer martinis. I can’t skip dying, but I can skip the graveyard, my ashes snugging in a rose...
