Indie Lit Round-Up: What to Read This Weekend [Vol 19: Sep 29]
The Coil editor rounds up the best literary pieces from the indie Internet for you to read this weekend.
There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet to read. Here, let me help you wade through the crap to get to the good stuff. This recurring column features stories, reviews, poems, interviews, essays, and literary whatnot that you might have missed, and you can come back every weekend for new great reads.
“Maybe he can reshape the doors.” | KAIYA GORDON has a great poem about Bruce Springsteen and being trans, “Bruce Springsteen Visits Me at the Doctor’s Office,” in Split Lip Magazine.
“My husband is cheating on me with me.” | LEONORA DESAR has a flash piece of faltering marriages and changing personalities in “Us” at Cheap Pop.
“You’re alone on the road when the scraping sound starts to drown out Elliott Smith coming through the car radio.” | DINA L. RELLES talks about the intimacy of strangers in “And Sometimes We Meet” at Matchbook.
“We were in the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts in Beaumont, TX, when I told Kyle that I was pregnant.” | AMELIA GRAY talks “about closed doors, physical contact, willful ignorance, the search for meaning, obsessive love, the inertia of the day to day, and, ultimately, what to share” in her story, “These Are the Fables,” at Electric Literature.
“The ad said ‘I will rate your vagina,’ so I sent it in.” | REBECCA SCHIFF endures the rating of her body parts in “Rate Me” on Buzzfeed.
“Believe it or not, nobody objected.” | CLAIRE POLDERS has a flash of family and death, “The Last Gift,” at Tin House.
“They called it gunk and I felt like I should act as if I’d won the booby prize in a seventies kids TV show.” | CLARE ARCHIBALD gets familiar with “Gunk” at Entropy.
“Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife.” | MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL puts a new spin on some familiar faces in “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” at Tor.
“Gidge Uriza lives in an elegant wooden house with large glass windows overlooking a glittering creek, fringed by weeping willows and meadows twinkling with fireflies.” | LESLIE JAMISON talks about the promise and futility of Second Life in “The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future” at The Atlantic.
“Sudsing the black panties in the bathroom sink.” | WENDY C. ORTIZ has two stream-of-consciousness flash pieces at Ghost Proposal.
