Category: one-shots
One-off short stories and other meditations encapsulated in and of themselves.
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A CROSS THRU
The child went missing. The man who took her insists she’s old enough. He tells her she’s old enough, more than other children her age. The child has been lonely. She wants to feel she’s old enough. She is not old enough. There is a monstrous gulf between a girl child and safety. I used…
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Monk’s Dream
Suggested Listening: The 1963 Monk’s Dream album by Theolonious Monk Quartet This is more of a performance piece, so read it out loud slow and with vitality, especially if you’re a Philly kid. I wrote it for a July 4th reading that METROPOLARITY was doing with Kimya Dawson in 2018, scribbled in pencil in my…
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Discipline Welcomes Beauty | A Cleaning & Organizing Grimoire
Please enjoy this audio work in its entirety as read from the original zine, available for purchase here. Sonic ambiance provided by Pauline Darkstar. Discipline Welcomes Beauty by M Téllez A bitch’s/witch’s grimoire. Discipline, cleaning, and organizing are things I’ve developed a reputation for, and this zine meditates on the principles behind my habits. Appreciated…
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HEAT DEATH OF WESTERN HUMAN ARROGANCE
TRANSITIONAL TIMES TRANSITIONAL BODY by M Téllez She turned to me with half-lidded eyes, her mouth turned upward like a cat’s face. Her hands rested on the worn wooden surface beneath her congregation of plants. We needed nothing to see with, just the full moon’s cool blue cast. The slopes and lines of her shoulder…
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About A Woman and A Kid
An older woman came to town. By town I mean our little dark forest, which is on the disconnected part of the city—the other side of the river where the power’s broken up anymore. She came in the morning when we were out pulling weeds and foraging along the creek banks. She had a lot…
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Adolescence
How my heart used to race at the sound of a dial-up connection The beige clack of keyboard. An adolescent body perched on a greasy dining room chair The glow of a desktop screen, resolution 800 x 600. This is where I grew up, in an invisible universe, now imploded. When I was…
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GENTRY
Y’all are some fools—I can’t stand this shit. I’m yelling and gnashing my teeth and screeching at them in modified Common to pay attention. But these gentry don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. You know that? Then they get robbed and laughed at and their goddamn feelings hurt cause they wanna talk to…