Category: Bad Survivalist

Sara Quinn Rivara: “Instructions for Surviving the End of the World,” a hybrid piece for Bad Survivalist

x The road to Mouth Cemetery is gravel, hardly a road. Runs past a falling-down yellow farmhouse, three air conditioners thrumming in the windows, a sign nailed to a dead oak: trespassers will be shot! The road slips into beech-maple woods, becomes dirt, then disappears into long grass. Over the dune, Lake Michigan sluiced the…
Bad Survivalist: “there is this instrument called a gnomon,” a poem by Ryan Rowland

—for Nicky J There is some tool called a gnomon I guessit measures shadowsSprayed by the sun I’ll tell you this now I know nothingOf tools I speak more of shadows shitYou can’t measure. Ask her for the truth theseShadows from the sun and only the oneSun strong enough to make an orchidpossible at Home…
“Bear Control”: A Short Story by Jennifer Lynn Christie for Bad Survivalist

Part I: The Beginning When I was small, I had dreams of the zoo. Putting mammoth-sized kibble in a bowl for the elephants, communicating with gorillas by hand, making sure the seal got her little fish. The painful, but necessary vaccine, the shot that might put a suffering tiger out of an agony that, even in…
“Owls in the Palms : The Uninspired Apartment : Notes from a Lost Decade (1)”: A Bad Survivalist Short Story by Reagan Wiles

The police left my iPod behind on the hillside in front of Red Lobster with my red leather journal, seven dollars and the Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, which I had bought only hours before; they put me in the squad car without incident. I did not resist. In fact, I was so cooperative that I…
“On ‘Starlings, Caravans’ by Kay Sage”: An Ekphrastic Essay by Nadia Arioli (nee Wolnisty) for Bad Survivalist

Once, I broke my own heart. Listen. Miscarriage is normal, expected, considered fine. We get our hopes up. We say, Yes, yes, we can do this. Our bodies know what to do. Kay Sage is a painter with rules. I can’t quite figure them out when I’m awake, which makes sense, is right, for a…
“Bad Trip”: A Bad Survivalist Short Story by Melody Sinclair

Merlin Klotz sweated through his T-shirt with giant lettering that read, “OK BOOMER.” He questioned why he wore it in the first place. He was on a shuttle bus, leaving from his hotel in route to a drug retreat full of hippies, as the brochure he found in his mother’s apartment described. The retreat was…
“We Followed the Goldfinches”: A Bad Survivalist Short Story by George L. Hickman

The year that Jack and I rejected everything man-made, we drove into the mountains. Our 2010 Corolla was man-made, but we didn’t mind that. Its low hum encased us, carrying us through rolling hills. How strange to plunge into our new life in the outdoors from behind the walls of a sturdy metal tube. How…
“Creamer”: A Personal Essay for Bad Survivalist by Marlene Olin

I’m not a demanding person. All I need is my morning cup of coffee. Plus a teaspoon of sugar and a little creamer. Fuck! I’m out of creamer. My fingers dance on the keyboard, and I can’t believe my luck. The creamer’s coming. Not in five days or six but today. But the driver no habla…
“An Offering of Space”: An Essay for Bad Survivalist by Whitney Kerutis

My body wakes me one morning as a crater collecting water. I ring out the stiffness, twisting my torso left and right. Keep my eyes shut. Hold myself like a spouse whose body is easy to swallow. * One morning, a woman seated two rows ahead of me on the bus tries to find the…