Jimmy Pappas: Invitation to join Michael Simms on Zoom, Monday, Dec. 15, 7pm ET
Join us when Michael Simms presents DIRTY REALISM on Monday, December 15 at 7 PM ET.
Video: Les Bêtes
A mysterious rabbit with a set of magic keys assembles a host of strange creatures to entertain a wicked king and his decadent court in this dark stop-motion animated fantasy inspired by the works of Ladislas Starevich.
Deborah DeNicola: Millennium Jubilee
We were called to attend the fake alien invasion. The subpoena arrived in a blue vellum envelope with a stamp of clouds and empty sky and a watermark hologram of a dove. They gave the date and time but Jim noticed the venue was missing.
Video: Side Hustle
Interweaving fiction with documentary testimony of sugar babies and sex workers, Side Hustle follows a young dancer making rent with the financial support of her sugar daddy.
Octavia E. Butler: Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear
In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
Charles Harper Webb: Appetite
The crowds seem endless, tramping past
the Hunger Artist’s straw-filled cage to see
the panther’s glinting teeth and lethal stride.
Gerald Fleming: Two Somethings
He could have run marathons, triathlons, could have blundered through densest jungles barefoot, quick-macheted, and not been prepared for this. He could have caressed the skin of a hundred women or men, every texture, every shade, but now this….
Kahlil Gibran: War
One night a feast was held in the palace, and there came a man and prostrated himself before the prince, and all the feasters looked upon him; and they saw that one of his eyes was out and that the empty socket bled.
Ron Koertge: An Old Farmer
still has a few cows and goats he helped into this world, then fed with a bottle. They follow him everywhere, eyes rolled up in adoration.
Video: Shé (Snake)
Fei, a 16 year old British-Chinese girl, is the top violinist in an elite youth orchestra. When another Chinese violinist arrives to challenge her place, Fei’s anxieties and internalized racism grow to take monstrous physical form. They whisper to her, urging her to be the best, no matter the cost.
Gerald Fleming: The Secret
The man had the sense the secret was planning escape.
Richard Hoffman: Nestling
One day an old painter, impatient with his failures, took a scissors to the paintings he didn’t like, cutting them into strips and putting them out with the trash.
Baron Wormser: Salvation
On Flannery O’Connor, Donald Trump, and American Violence
Video: The Tornado Outside
Anna lives in a perfect house at the edge of a tornado. When she needs to go outside, she is forced to face the chaos of life that she usually hides away from.
