The trope of the writer in a dusty room with his fingers teetering over the keys of a typewriter is well worn. A cigarette dangles from his lips. A pot of coffee smolders in the corner. Magazines and sheaves of paper scatter the floor. Perhaps a cat lounges on the sofa, or watches pigeons on […]
When I need a book, I call my mother first. She volunteers at a library bookstore and sometimes you can get what you need there for fifty cents. My creative nonfiction mentor wanted me to read Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, so over a salad lunch together I asked my mom if she’d seen any […]
I haven’t been to the place where my father isn’t buried, only ashes and the idea of him. I haven’t said my goodbyes over the patch of grass where his body doesn’t lay….
A few nights ago, I was on my way from Denver to Creede, Colorado. I arranged to sleep in a little red Coleman tent on the grounds of a farm just outside Salida, about midway between. I found it on Airbnb. It cost thirty-four dollars. The rain graciously waited to start until I zipped up […]
“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” -Pablo Picasso On the first day of a weeklong creative writing camp, Joshua, Dylan, and Darcy settled into their seats on the couches. Through introductions I learned that, while Joshua was nine like everyone else, he had skipped to […]
Hindu Santa stashes / boxes of Just for Men / under the bathroom / sink, bare scalp painted / black with faded tooth / brush bristles. Barbasol…
Dialogue is an important ingredient to any good story. When characters begin to talk, they not only come to life for the reader, they become real for the writer as well. Writing good dialogue is essential to drawing a reader into the character world you’re creating, whether it is in fiction, nonfiction, or screenplays. Characters […]
When I was eight years old, my father brought home a rabbit. He and my uncle had been foraging for mushrooms when they found it cowering under a pine tree. Its leg was broken and it was unable to move quickly but it was otherwise a large, healthy rabbit. Its fur was thick and gray, […]
I construct intimate artworks that investigate the gross romance between person and location…
When I was pregnant with my first daughter, my social media photostream underwent the (irritating, irrepressible) transition from Normal Adult Feed to Prenatal and, then, Child-Rearing Feed. There was a lot going on. Life in my postpartum body treated me to some surprises and some alarming changes. I couldn’t do Zumba without peeing my pants […]
During a two-hour question-and-answer session at our June residency, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo told the Antioch MFA community, “Commerce is fast, art is slow.” I took that to mean, if you want to make something that didn’t exist before—something layered and meaningful, something unexpected—you have to take it slow. That’s a challenge for me. […]
I met Wryly last June, when they were known as Wendy. This would change within a couple months. One December night, we walked along Venice Beach during Antioch University’s MFA winter residency. As long as I’d known them, Wryly had gone by they/them pronouns, but it wasn’t until December, perhaps ushered by the name change, […]
A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper. E.B. White One of the greatest challenges of the writing process is not the writing itself, but the inception, the starting, the beginning of writing: sitting in a chair on a new day to write a […]
You might be a writer if all of your books are at the bottom of your bag because you packed them first. You might be a writer if you see landscapes in descriptions. The cumulus clouds drifted high above us; the water lapped its wet tongue at our toes. You might be a writer if […]
We wandered your city / for five days, hemmed within / those same cobbled creases, / tucked between brownstones- / mordant lines grown soft / in the damp October night…
When my brother was little, his bedroom was a minefield of broken things. He took stuff apart, wanted to see how it worked. Toy cars, radios. He was just as happy with hand-me-down junk from our grandparents’ basement as he was with something new from the store. It all had the same dismantling fate. Beware, […]
Once when I was in my early twenties, the tires on my car had gone bald, and my mother offered to take me to Sears to get replacements. At the time I didn’t even know the department store sold tires. And who still shopped there anyway? But my mom assured me […]
Lunch Ticket’s inaugural poetry editor and MFA graduate, Daniel G. Reinhold, died unexpectedly in the early hours of Tuesday, April 21, 2015, while sitting up working at his computer. He died as he lived his entire adult life, engaged with art. Daniel had been a member of the Antioch community in one way or another […]
As this is my final issue as Editor for Lunch Ticket, and thus my last “Word from the Editor,” I wanted to take a moment to reiterate what I think is a core belief of the magazine before exiting. Now more than ever we writers face the question of whether art can still function as a […]
Dead Birds is a documentary about the aboriginal people of New Guinea. Behavior Modification shows early attempts to treat autism. Orange is an erotic film in which a man peels and eats an orange. Slowly. I worked my way through undergraduate school as a film projectionist […]
Listen… On a velvety night in a desert land, a cool wind moved among dunes and glided into a small village. The curious wind lifted the long limbs of the date palm trees, touched the donkey’s fur in the stable, and poked through the open window of Ayesha’s room in her family’s house […]
When I spoke with Nick Flynn, it was a Sunday afternoon in late May. Hot, humid, and there is no better way to say this—it was loud. The kind of loud that reminds you life is loud and busy and happening all at once. He was solo with his 7-year-old daughter […]
The Nail that Sticks Out: On Vietnamese Poet Ly Doi’s Poetics of Resistance Vietnamese Publishing Law lists the following subjects as taboo. If a writer chooses to publish a piece that crosses these vague restrictions, there’s a good chance he or she can expect a visit from the police, along with some combination of fines, […]
[flash fiction] The airplane parts are everywhere. I find the first at lunch with Jane. A little black box floats to the top of my soup and I chew. It sends a metallic shock up through my teeth, rattling my skull. I feel it going down hard. Slicing through my throat and puncturing a lung. […]
She curled gnarled fingers around her copy of the poem. Over the many years it remained folded and tucked inside a red mitten, the single page of stationary had lost its crisp edge and took on the softness of the faded red yarn. She kept the pair in the far corner of her top drawer, away from the influence of an old lilac sachet […]
Behind the wired window drinking grape juice women swoon to the gospel oxidized like corked wine On D-Block we write letters Dear bud of forsythia Dear love Dear fetus Salutations pour from us like wine We watch each other cradle our cloth and clothespin dolls […]
Allison Joseph is the author of six poetry books: What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand, 1992), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1997), In Every Seam (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon, 2003), Worldly Pleasures (WordTech Communications, 2004), Voice: Poems (Mayapple Press, 2009), and My Father’s Kites: Poems (Steel Toe Books, 2010). […]
Most little girls wish for ponies on their eighth birthdays. Angelina Abercrombie, however, was not a typical little girl. She already lived in a mansion, along with a very rich father, a very beautiful mother, a chef, a maid, and her own personal cotton-candy machine. Last year she had wished for a pony, and her […]
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