"From the middle outwards, or from a semi-vacated center where oceans never roll or signal, it moves towards the periphery like a spot of scum on the bathtub that everyone avoids..."
-Robert Speiser, on the toxic religion poisoning our well.
#EarthDay
"My bi-annual check-up on my elementary school crush goes how I expect it to, with me frowning at the scraggly mustache that sprouts from his lip and the American traditional tattoos sleeving his arms..."
Dee Mohammed, on how our fixations settle, shift.
www.completesentencelit.com/post/ritual-...
"...lean out and let the city have you, because screaming here makes you prey, to cops, to strangers, to time, to anything that doesn’t look like you...
-Oleg Olizev, on everything in the city waiting to tear you apart, bring you to your knees.
www.completesentencelit.com/post/new-york
*raised hand emoji
We publish single-sentence fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and anything that skulks between the this holy trinity.
I didn't start a magazine of single-sentence prose 5 years ago to help me win @marchxness.bsky.social, but right now my essay on "Glycerine" is down against "Brick." If you're part of the Comp Sent hive, VOTE my essay and "Glycerine" SADDEST! Polls close 9am PST
marchxness.com#/elite8-fold...
Last night I shot a music video on the blacked-out beach for my synth'd out "Glycerine" cover. Big thanks to Dave Rosman for the violin, big thanks to YOU for voting Bush on to the Final Four of @marchxness.bsky.social!
youtu.be/E1DOPrrgCgg
One of our new initiatives at The Rumpus is a Spanish language section, El Alboroto, where we publish original Spanish prose and poetry. If you write in Spanish or know people who do, please send them here to read our guidelines and submit their work. therumpus.submittable.com/submit/35215...
My @marchxness.bsky.social essay on how a shirtless Gavin Rossdale saved my life faces off against Paula Cole and all of her furry sons. @erindorney.bsky.social nails the sadness of heteronormativity and I'm shaking in my (decidedly not cowboy) boots.
marchxness.com#/2ndround-co...
Don’t let the days go by without reading my @marchxness.bsky.social essay on life as a ‘90s sad boy, aching to be beautiful and charismatic Gavin Rossdale, crooning “Glycerine” shirtless in the rain as a sea of sweaty MTV Spring Breakers sing along to yr heartbreak.
marchxness.com#/1stround-bu...
"...separated from her group, she ended up in a second-story bedroom filled with ceramic pigs and origami pigs and pig dolls with round pink pig faces and pigtails for hair..."
Brendan Todt, on the creatures that unsettle us most.
www.completesentencelit.com/post/the-bas...
"There should be a word for when you’re walking through your parents’ subdivision at dusk and the sky is lavender and peach and sweat is dripping down your neck..."
Maria Hardin explores how the quiet unrest in our gut colors the world we witness.
"...we worked solitary tasks at a distance from one another...ragged breezes sweeping by, cooling our sweat like ghosts passing through us..."
Robert Erle Barham's haunting sentence searches for comfort in the familiar phantoms that follow us.
"...or perhaps it was hearing Mariah Carrey’s “All I want for Christmas is You” from November through February, over and over and over and over, on the jukebox..."
Sophie Amado, on the grind of tending bar, passed down through generations.
"..he told me he’d endured 14 ex-boyfriends, two of whom had died of drug overdoses, he said 'I really know how to pick them,' which I think was the boy’s only effective joke.."
Edmario Lesi on misconnections & pissing on the frozen lake beneath our feet
www.completesentencelit.com/post/what-ki...
"...I’ve pretend-twisted the key over my lips and activated the pulley, jerking the ladle that rolls a golf ball down the plank and into the hole igniting the flame that burns the photo of us..."
@kiklodge.bsky.social on breaking up, Rube Goldberg-style
"You ask me what you are worth...it is easy enough to calculate...your body, deconstructed, contains approximately $129 worth of oxygen, $384 of carbon, $7.20 of Nitrogen..."
Andi Myles crunches the numbers on what we are and are not worth to each other.
"...nineteen, disowned for my exposed desires and all alone, soothed myself to sleep with think of the money, the money, the money...
So much story lurks in negative space in Candace Walsh's deep dive into the mind of a surrogate.
"..I didn’t know yet that in my twenties, I would become dry everywhere—dry knuckles in the winter: peeling, bleeding, cutting, blood dripping onto my laptop..."
@rubyprosenthal.bsky.social on the skin we shed, scratch free from & the new bodies we reveal
www.completesentencelit.com/post/dry-mai...
I'm in Complete Sentence Lit today! Have been a fan of this journal since I was in college and am quite grateful to be in it.
www.completesentencelit.com/post/dry-mai...
"I had a vision of Jesus once— yes, a vision of Jesus and my deceased grandfather and also my deceased twin..."
@isabelh8.bsky.social, on the meaning we unearth from the images that crystalize in us, and how their resonance shifts in timbre with time
"Six muscled litter carriers deposit my sister’s soul-slipping body in her Happy Place of soft bedding, motivational quotes, and perfectly picked wall colors..."
-MaxieJane Frazier, on the surreality of death and the elephantine weight of grief.
www.completesentencelit.com/post/elephan...
@timothycgoodwin.bsky.social is probably the luckiest writer we know cuz he's got a dad who can whip up trippy-ass art to pair with his words. Gary Goodwin, absolutely knocking it out of the backyard with this painting.
"In hindsight, my hat looked nothing like a fedora, and the mustache my best friend Charley taped to his lip looked nothing like Hitler's..."
@timothycgoodwin.bsky.social conjures a child-world that expands within a sentence, collapsing just as quick
www.completesentencelit.com/post/indiana...
New piece out today with @completesentence.bsky.social! I’m so happy to be in one of my fave lit mags. And—bonus!—my dad painted the artwork! www.completesentencelit.com/post/indiana...
"...Kyle and Annie both understand that the heart is a spider web capable of trapping and feasting on small, beautiful joys..."
It's tricky shifting close 3rd Person POV mid-story, damn near impossible mid-sentence. Yet, @andrew-maynard.bsky.social nails it.
www.completesentencelit.com/post/carbs
Set out to create the most literary one-sentence story ever written about the intersection of hand jobs and the Olive Garden. Thank you @completesentence.bsky.social for giving this piece a home. And my nephew for making the art. www.completesentencelit.com/post/carbs
"...that doesn’t stop me from being a heroine on the brink of madness, it doesn’t stop me from knowing that ghosts, guilt, and grief are so often the same thing..."
Who is the terrorizer and whom the terrorized in Jade Braden's spooky 1-sentence essay?
www.completesentencelit.com/post/my-own-...
"...Sharon had mastered the art of functional dissociation, a skill she employed during dinner dates, but also job interviews, missionary sex, and instructor-led exercise..."
Anyu Ching's tightly coiled story unfurls, a slap bracelet before snapping back
www.completesentencelit.com/post/exposur...
"...in search of the untranslatable, in an airless chase or a desperate dying expression, some lucky few find themselves translated, unable to return to that object they were previously..."
-William Zheng-Kang Hassett, on how words define, translate us
Got a new one-sentence story that has first given seed in a hospital waiting room, then progressed in the SmokeLong Fitness (@smokelong.bsky.social), and found its final shape on Complete Sentence (@completesentence.bsky.social) today. Hope you enjoy.