Dolan Morgan

HOW DOES A PERSON COME HOME IN THE EVENING

HISTORY IS FILLED WITH FATHERS AND BUILDINGS

each inside the other and burning. My old man is another. Licked his way along basement floors, disappeared in the bushes. Twelve hour work shift, failure and wine–the question of garbage, scratch offs, child support and prison time: have you ever pulled a burning building from the body of a man?

IT’S NOT EASY TO DRIVE DRUNK ALL THE WAY HOME FROM THE DELI

There’s the twenty-third street butcher shop where the weapon was found, but a lot of men shoulder half a dozen lives and die each day in the arms of a mother. Have we ever talked for longer than an hour? When people love each other because they’re afraid to be alone, that settles the difference between admiration and pity.

I SMELL YOU

from across a crowded room, so either I love you or I’ll know when you're dead. Skipp, please don’t get up off the floor, just send me an angel that flies from Montgomery, and make me a poster of an old rodeo.

Dolan Morgan lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where he helps edit The Atlas Review. He’s the author of two story collections, That’s When the Knives Come Down (A|P, 2014) and INSIGNIFICANA (CCM, 2016). His work can be found in The Believer, PANK, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, The Lifted Brow, Selected Shorts, and the trash. Find him at @dolanmorgan