Emily Pettit
ALICE ASTER APPROACHES
Alice Aster, a certain kind of disaster, could not pass her postmaster exam. Daughter of a newscaster and ringmaster each new chapter Alice Aster approached the clatter with laughter. Alice Aster was easy to flatter. Made that really matter. Then she got sadder. Felt herself shatter and scatter. Was no longer possible to flatter. Had run off with an actor. Alice Aster forgot an important factor regarding the actor. She was lonely with him. Her friends were in the center. Speaking through the past. Sending lots of letters. She wrote back, Find someone for me to be in love with that I’m not in love with.
EMILY PETTIT is the author of Goat in the Snow (Birds LLC) and Blue Flame (Carnegie Mellon University Press).
ISSUE EIGHT features poetry by Brent Armendinger, Amanda Auerbach, Jenny Browne, Oni Buchanan, jayy dodd, Robert Fernandez, Jennifer Hasegawa, Valerie Hsiung, Troy Jollimore, David Kirby, David Lehman, Erika Meitner, Miguel Murphy, Daniel Nester, Kathleen Ossip, Emily Pettit, Sean Singer, Ed Skoog, and Elizabeth Willis; fiction by Lucy Corin, David Crouse, Cynthia Cruz, Nicholas Delbanco, Marcos Giralt Torrente, and Stuart Nadler; nonfiction by Elisa Albert, Kelle Groom, Kirsten Kaschock, Nadia Owusu, and Enrique Vila-Matas; film essays by Justin Phillip Reed; and an interview with Elizabeth Willis.