Weightlifting

When he first started pushing barbells, he did it to get his anger out, throwing the weights from his body, stressing his tendons as he exhaled sprays of spit with every red-faced repetition, every sweaty pump. He realized his joints wouldn’t last long hurling metal, so he calmed his approach, traded manic intervals – of fighting gravity with fury – for calculated precision, and he’d demonstrate, lying down on a chair with an invisible bar connecting his fists, showing us the proper form of a barbell press, his big forearms and biceps flexing and twisting slowly as his muscles contracted, then extended.

From Guest Contributor Parker Wilson

Parker is a writer and editor living in Highland Park. He is a recent MFA graduate and spends his free time running along the Detroit River. He’s published in Bristol Noir and is a founding editor at DUMBO Press.

Instagram:@parkerreviewsbooks

After Auschwitz

Survivors with faded numbers tattooed on their wrinkled forearms slowly reboard the tourist bus. The archives they were supposed to visit burned down months ago. Yahweh beckons me forward with a curled finger. Don’t make eye contact, I remind myself. Seconds later I feel the blast wave on my cheek. It also knocks off my hat. “Look!” Yahweh booms in his usual angry voice. “Remember!” There are clouds, come evening, that will resemble bleeding stigmata. There are birds that return to nests in the eyeholes of skulls. I could try to explain it to anyone who asks. No one asks.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good