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The New House
In the old house, the swarms of flies / you sent clouded the bathroom mirror / and swam in the puddles of wine
Photo Shoot, Roseland Park Cemetery, July 1985
The photos arrived, tucked inside your letter with its paragraphs / of charm as preamble for the main point, dagger-honed, / that stabbed me by surprise. You’d made an effort
Van the Tree Man
When Tom Blake was a young insurance agent in downtown Cincinnati, he worked for his Uncle Walt at the Walt Blake Agency, a well-known but decrepit local fixture.
Hard Candy
In the manuscript a middle-aged woman (single, childless) / looks after her crotchety father. He has shot someone, / but not to death, or maybe he took the buckshot to the gut.
O is for Orangutan, C is for Cleopatra
In the span of fifty-five years, Grandma Clou had four or five husbands. Stories were swapped like trading cards. The plumber she married at sixteen; he was thirty-two. Then there was the second cousin she met at a BBQ.
Letter from the Editor
Our inaugural issue, “The Journey,” sought to illuminate our path as we embarked on a new chapter of The Headlight Review.
Editor’s Note
By continuing to create and share with each other, we have combined our light to forge a beacon that leads us back to one another, as well as back to the tools that we may have at one point thought we didn’t have the strength to use
decant desperation
there are no words for / a mother in mourning / her cries are / swans’ calls / seeking swift shelter / no bonfire can warm her / she floats,
The Boys of Kenneth Street
We played mumbletypeg with jackknives. / We stole Playboys from the first 7/11. We played corkball and kickball / and football in the street. Cars / interrupting a game were given a / raspberry. We weren’t really hoodlums—
EXCEPT YOU
What gets archived / a song in November / a psalm in the fields / chants around a fire?
Randy’s Class
I recite the combination of my new lock as I walk from the Y locker room to the spin studio, picking my way between treadmills and weight machines. I must burn these numbers into my brain. My street clothes, car keys, phone, and wallet are locked away and I can’t get them back if I forget the number.
shyness can stop you
this little silver instamatic camera shoots panoramas. / fits in your pocket, if there's no chewing gum or keys in there. it’s no / picturesque paul simon kodachrome.
Unarbitrary Definition for The New Concise Modern Dictionary of Synchromysticism
because · /bɪˈkɒz/ · conjunction. 1. Because the limited, dual nature of the human mind necessitates the illusion of cause and effect.
Blood Money
The Plasma Donation Center is about a mile off the UGA campus, straight down Baxter Street. I can walk there. On the way I pass high-rise dormitories like Russell Hall, the all-girls dorm called Brumby and the grocery store where I buy cheap food.