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 […]
It’s terrible when you’re defeated by a bag of oranges. The oranges were just a purchase, one of many at the supermarket. It was such a tiny act, so lost in the millions of ordinary tasks of the day that I don’t remember the details. Maybe it was Tuesday and raining, or Thursday and annoyingly […]
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 […]
The Horizon, Hemmed in Gold Best friend, yours is the right to raft down the smooth rivers, to bushwhack through the black forests at night and to freshen your senses in the streaming wind; to sing to the fields a rice-growing song; to turn your grin upward at the scattered stars; to gaze at the […]
“I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare.” —Ecclesiastes 7:26 Some interstate in the south. I’m around seven. We’ve been in the car for hours—en route to […]
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). […]
My brain is starting to unravel. It’s gone bad. I can feel everything loosen up, softening, rippling under the inverted moonlight of my eyes. It’s really gone bad. I’m starting to see the big picture now, and I’m not sure what it is—blurred candy shadows, a scorched candlewick, the skin of eggshells, a smile in […]
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 […]
[flash fiction] The flashlight was out of batteries, so instead the boy filled a jar with fireflies. Outside at night they were easy to catch, their bodies afloat in the air, lighting up like tiny planes. He cupped his hands to capture them, and watched the insects beat through his skin with an orange glow. […]
Snow is falling inside the house, said the boy. His voice was breathless from running. Go. Quickly. Fetch my magic robe, said the old lady. You promised to kill the hunter, said the boy when he returned. He gave her the robe and then his hand stole to his neck—scratch, scratch. Let us go then, […]
Now what if Now what if it were like in a real mystery where the guilty parties would not be sought out where the strongest suspicion fell but a place no one had thought of and yet obvious to people with hindsight Now what if the ringleaders were only ringleaders in their own and all […]
Day of Rest Glass-fibred beings under online drums in the heat of the bits, always a ringing in the ears, more zero than one, up tonine-one-one, plug in the socket, through the night, day in, day out, night failure, day failure power failure. Dead zone of the electrons. Leave the cables where they are, marvel […]
The cardinals built their nest in the cow’s skull tucked into brain cavity today is the day of fledglings testing pinion strength of warmth creeping through roots steam whisping above not-so-gold-carp pond ++++++++++++++++++++babies venture out through eye sockets arboreal dreams ++++++inherited desire gives them lift but maybe they have no thought to question from where? […]
I have started going to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meetings—the acronym is SLAA, pronounced like the chopped cabbage side-dish that a friend of mine once declared only straight people eat. Which means that the other program I belong to, the so-called “beverage program,” which shall remain nameless because the first rule of Fight Club […]
In the overgrown backyard of a neat suburban house, there stood a treehouse falling into loving disrepair. Unlike the catalogue-bought boxes in toy stores, this treehouse sat nestled in the arms of an aging oak tree, almost like it had always been there somehow. If you were passing through, you might have mistaken it for […]
First you notice the writing students in front of you slowing down, then pausing, and moving into the street. Yellow tape is stretched across the sidewalk tied to a tree and a lamppost. You can’t read the black printing. The now visible police cars and years of TV say crime scene. The red lights flashing […]
Kerry Madden-Lunsford grew up traveling around the South as the daughter of a football coach. Her first novel, Offsides, drew on her experiences, but is not an autobiography. She is one of the few writers authorized to write a biography of Harper Lee, Up Close: Harper Lee, which made Booklist’s Ten Top Biographies for 2009 for Youth. She […]
My country, why this crazy love for you? You got me born so I could be your wound. Where can I hide on the barren hill? My verses dog me like old murderers. And deep in my ice every night something breaks. With your name I’ll name the curve you lean on like […]
[fiction] Plastic Cups One night I dreamt about eating raspberry pie—a moist, succulent slice with flaky crust and way more butter than my cholesterol level demanded. I awoke to find a pebble-sized object in my mouth. Turning it over with my tongue, I tasted a burst of raspberry and butter. I stuck out my tongue […]
We go to the hospital together. I don’t want to go at all. The photos tucked behind grosgrain ribbon in the sterile room will contain our toothless grins, our Brownie vests, our prom dresses with spaghetti straps and cheap iridescence. We have come so far since our teenage years: the acne has retreated, our butterfly […]
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