Explore

The flail is raised high, back bent in echo of the boys’ backs.

When I saw her, I was witness and weapon both, charging at her.

Each harbored a sense that a family of three was not a real family.

Despite seeing the other knockoffs, I hoped my dress would be perfect.

More and more whiskey was required to knock out the elephant.

Here’s the part where you pledge devotion until death, I told myself.

We looked at each other beneath a London sky, on a Zeppelin night.

He thinks with joy and conviction that the Japanese are his enemy.

Joanna Walsh

Joanna Walsh

Joanna Walsh

How did I ever survive? Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I died back there.

They dust off facts like diamonds that excel in perfection under a monocle.

I saw Les gazing up at me. And that’s when I made my mistake.

My country neither interested me nor inspired any sense of fealty.

“She was breakable, and I probably knew it from the start.”

The field wants to stretch the hours, wants to be empty for us.

I uttered words I will regret to my last breath, which is already near.

Lorena hummed inside her mind, anticipating daybreak.

A body must learn again how to accept the proprietorial hands of a lover.

What was he, twenty, no, twenty-two years younger than me.

We had a pact to live outside the adult world forever, and we broke it.

It all started at Phillips Andover Academy when he was fourteen.

I cared less about the potential payoff than I did about being right.

I have not won yet, but I behave, I feel and think like a rich man.

Why is a duel out of the question? Men are all cocks; they should fight.

It’s not clear that Hemingway completely knew what he was doing.

The dean’s voice was stuck in my head. Plagiarism. Expulsion.

He picked up a fairy disguised as a go-go dancer and brought her home.