issue #1: musical golden shovels

San Francisco General, Six PM

29 April 2026

Sixteen hours of waiting, and I haven’t showered, haven’t slept, slumped in these plastic chairs with no hope of understanding how someone could be filled with so much hate—in their fists and their feet—blows fall, kicks land—a whole group of them out of control—and you, my precious boy, bearing that weight, curled up and crying in an alley somewhere, all heart, all spirit, all joy, and I don’t know how the world got so screwed up or maybe it was always this way, full of this stupid fear, stupid hate, stupid ignorance, but you are song and light and you are written in love and it’s not about them. It’s about you. Coming back to me.

Notes

After “I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me” by Fall Out Boy.

about the author

Kathleen Latham is a poet and fiction writer from Boston, Massachusetts. Her debut poetry collection The Ones (Kelsay Books, 2024), was an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee. Her work has received the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Grand Prize, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and the Bridport Prize among others. Find her at KathleenLatham.com or on social media at @lathamwithapen.