Maggie Su | Indiana Review

IR Online Poetry: “The Talking Chalk” by Isabella Escalante

“The Talking Chalk“

by Isabella Escalante

“Druble drow old rows,”
she drones, pointing her mono-nose
towards the blackboard
She picks up chalk,
and skrit-skrat-scratches across
so hard and so fast that the chalk screams,
“bloody murder!”

He prays to his chalk lord,
holy god of chalk, wailing
“Oh, god, please,
just let me the fuck out!
I have dreams of scribbles, trouble, and fresh pavement
that I need to live!”

It’s all in vain, though
He squeaks to the numb and the glazed,
the dumb and the blazed,
who watch him
get shaved down
to lesser versions of himself

Soon the chalk will lose his spunk,
and very soon after that,
he will be gone—
Reduced to insentient chalk dust
settled around the place he hated most

***

Isabella Escalante is a junior at the University of California Santa Cruz.

IR Online Poetry: “The Garden” by W.S. Brewbaker

“The Garden“

by W.S. Brewbaker

Even the flowers have grown stale,
darling, the grass cheap and flimsy.
The trees are a sham and the leaves
just dust. What I’m trying to say is
I’ve left the back door unlocked
and, should you come home,
I’ll be upstairs, watering
the cut hydrangeas, waiting.

***

W.S. Brewbaker is a 3rd-year student at the University of Virginia. He was born and raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gyroscope Review, After Happy Hour Review, and Lost Coast Review, among others.

IR Online Fiction: “The Good Ones Grow With You” by Katie Harrs

“The Good Ones Grow With You”

by Katie Harrs

The children of Myrtle Avenue believed that Miriam Merthyr was a witch. Sometimes she caught them watching her with wide eyes through the gaps in the fence. They hurried when they passed her house on the way to school, even crossing to the other side of the street. That she didn’t mind; it kept them out of her garden. She did, however, mind hearing the stories the children told each other around campfires and the ditties they sang while jumping rope. She had, on more than one occasion, seen them playing a game next door in which that horrible little Danny child played ‘Miriam the Witch’ by chasing and attempting to eat the others. Read more…

IR Online Fiction: “The Artist” by Robert Julius

“The Artist”

by Robert Julius

I took the usual route home. Passed underneath the 22. Must’ve been a dozen colored tents, tattered and torn, tarps flapping in the Santa Ana winds like they’re a good gust away from sailing to someplace nicer. Maybe someplace with less of a stench, away from the cud and muck and scum and sluts. That ain’t no way of living. That’s what my uncle, the Governor, tells me. And I believe him, for the most part. See, I knew this woman who used to hang out underneath the 22 some weekends. She don’t got a name, or if she does, she wouldn’t tell me because maybe she’s too old to be with someone like me. She’s a nebulous sort of woman, hair all over the place, you know, in the places that matter, and her eyes do this dodgy kind of thing where they look you straight in the soul but not long enough to mean it. But that don’t matter, not according to my uncle the Governor. Read more…

IR Online Fiction: “Mikey’s Flag Shirts” by Amzie Augusta Dunekacke

“Mikey’s Flag Shirts”

by Amzie Auguta Dunekacke

I don’t like American flag shirts much. Something about them seems gaudy to me, perhaps forced. I mean, I’ve been conditioned for patriotism since preschool taught me to begin every weekday morning with the Pledge of Allegiance. The routine carried on until high school graduation, the same emotionless recitation, the unconscious “One nation under God.” Maybe a red, white, and blue shirt is a more sincere offering of pride. Then again, maybe not. Read more…

Posts By: Maggie Su