Two Serious Ladies is named for the 1943 short novel by Jane Bowles.

“I have my happiness, which I guard like a wolf, and I have authority now and a certain amount of daring, which, if you remember correctly, I never had before.”


― Jane Bowles
Two Serious Ladies

 

Via Negativa by Maggie Millner

Reality is just a giant nip-slip
Nature, the Internet
Fine art is a nip-slip
And every drug you ever did

Loving someone is a nip-slip
Not to mention sex
The tree by my house is in a constant state of nip-slip
The white-sand beach, forget it

A beautiful man is a nip-slip
And God, an areola that is slipping through the fog
Lightning is the nip-slip of a galaxy
And nightmares are a nip-slip into hell

My life is a long, slow nip-slip
I grasp alarmingly for others at the moment
That a nip slips into view

My loneliness is a nip
I show to no one
Like an unflattering photo from my youth      

Maggie Millner lives in California, and her work has appeared in Phoebe, Interrupture, 32 Poems, and elsewhere.

MONKS by JoAnna Novak

A Sideways Speech by Caroline Kepnes