EDITORIAL REMARKS by M.R. Branwen
SLUSH PILE IS OFFICIALLY one year old, and sexier than ever. We’ve lost some weight, you see. And while “skinnier” is not always tantamount to “sexier,” we’re going to throw on some skinny jeans and go with it.
After a year of blood, sweat, and tears, most of the good folks who helped launch Slush Pile were lost to the demands of their real lives. Matthew Hotham was eaten alive by North Carolina; David Thorpe was coaxed away by the allure of more prestigious (or, at least, paid) writing gigs; Caroline Tanski was lost to her college education and the good Canadians at Sip Marketing may have actually died.
I thought of putting Slush Pile on hiatus, weary as I was of manning the ship with my two small hands. But, compelled by the ever-increasing influx of good fiction, and encouraged by my last remaining sidekick, Sara Petras, I decided instead to strip Slush Pile down to its essentials: Short Fiction and Art... (read more)
THAT WINTER THEY LIVED in the worst apartment yet, above Carmello’s Fresh Fish, in a creaky one-bedroom that always smelled like fish. Every day Molly could smell it, white fish with its slightly buttery, slightly brackish smell, the darker meatier smells of salmon and halibut, oily clams and mussels, briny lobsters, all seeping up through the splintering floorboards, the cracked and crusted... (read more)
TAKE CARE by Lisa Pierce Flores
MY DAUGHTER DIDN'T COME DOWN to see me much after she went to school up North. She liked the city I guess, liked her job, and why not? An air-conditioned office in a big glass building was sure better than the mill where her father and brother and me worked when she was growing up... (read more)
CLAW THE EARTH by William Gill
LAST NIGHT I MADE MY WAY to her. I lay with her again and we made our bed beneath the stars, beneath the sheltering elms that direct their roots to her for nourishment, for payment of their faithful guardianship. I stretched my hand to run my fingers through her hair, closing my eyes and feeling the strands... (read more)
THE SUPERIOR ACT by Christopher Harris
MY SUPERSOAKER WAS FILLED with cow piss. Bear Claw’s was filled with lemon pudding. Union Square smelled like wet bandages, steel drums clanged, I was so anonymous in this crowd of thousands I could barely breathe. We air-kissed both cheeks for luck, Bear Claw and I, and crossed East 14th Street... (read more)
CASUAL ENCOUNTERS
by Jeremy Lakaszcyck
LAST TUESDAY THE SOPHOMORES attended an emergency assembly given by our health studies teacher, Mrs. Hurley, because of the gonorrhea scare that’s been going on for months. Everyone either slept through it or doodled pictures of Miss Richardson’s ginormous tits like they did during Schindler’s List... (read more)
CAT LOVERS by Hayes Moore
ERIC ARRIVED HOME ONE EARLY October evening with a brown bag of Chinese take-out to findLaura playing a computer game, The Night’s Tale, cross-legged on her over-sized office chair. In the unlighted living room the thick glass in her pink frames reflected her Player Character, Cordelia Largeheart... (read more)
FEATURED ARTIST
Tirtzah Bassel
"I AM INTERESTED IN THE WAY that space informs the movement and performance of people inhabiting it. I scrutinize the spaces that I encounter, questioning: Who occupies the space? Who has the right to move in it? In what space does a performance become a provocation, an act of solidarity, a sign of communication, a form of resistance? I examine both the literal and metaphorical places that I occupy to identify the choreographies that they demand or enable."