May 28, 2021 - By Edward Clifford
I gave the devil a massage in broad daylight on hot summer grass. Skin on my palms began to burn and melt. Agony can feel good when it s wrong. His moaning lulled me, kept me in the dark place. We didn t dance but I assumed his pleasure formed inside me. from What the Masseuse Finds in the Backyard, from Volume 62, Issue 1 (Spring 2021)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first thing I wrote was a short story in grade school about a boy who was lost. I started writing poetry in middle school and then in high school I became more serious about it and was encouraged by my English teacher to write more.
Brooklyn, NY, June 19, 2020.
Volume 62, Issue 1
SPRING FORWARD, FALL BACK. As mnemonics go, one of the best, as equipment for living, not the recipe we need. Though this issue hits the bookstands the day after we spin the clocks ahead, if springing forward is what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the wrong place. Many things must change, given where we’ve been, yet none of that will happen unless we come to terms with what we’ve learned. And it isn’t the lies, the self-dealing, the rancor, or even, at some level, the damage done, the lives ended, the fortunes ruined, the friends and family lost. All of that still burns, how could it not, and nothing will be forgotten, because how could it be? Yet what is truly essential, what must at last be confronted, was delivered to us drop by drop during this interminable succession of isolated days, a truth that 2020 hindsight cannot not reveal. Though elsewhere there will be other versions, in the US that truth is simple: this co