Dale Bailey | Sleep Paralysis

The opening line is my riff on Bach’s chorale prelude “Come, Sweet Death,” one of his most profound. | © 2024 by John R. Turner. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...

24 Apr 20245min

It didn’t come as a surprise when AJ told me she wanted to open our relationship. We’d been an item for four years, but by the middle of the third year the two of us had long since checked out. | © 20...

17 Apr 202437min

When a nice man with a smart phone camera approaches them. It is also the phone he uses to record his real real reviews of the tacos from the authentic food trucks in Brooklyn and the scenes of the no...

10 Apr 202415min

When the American saw me sitting on a stone in the river, his mouth opened and closed, a brown trout caught on a fishing line. He kept his eyes on me as he hurried to pull off his socks and shoes, as ...

3 Apr 202441min

This poem began as flash fiction, and was then whittled even smaller—perhaps ironic, given its subject. I wrote this to explore how we change in a relationship, how it isn’t always healthy or best for...

27 Mar 20245min

I like car journeys in the passenger’s seat. They give me time to think and rethink things beyond the shape of my life. I’m not allowed to play music, but I can in my head. Places blur. Memories tangl...

22 Mar 202429min

Before we left camp, we were informed about the dos and donts for living in our respective communities, considering we were strangers. Happenings that we newcomers saw as strange should not be enough ...

13 Mar 20249min

Chuck was wire-sick again, so he hobbled up onto Jerome’s porch one sunny afternoon, need curling his spine like a bent clothes hanger. Jerome was the guy who could get you whatever you needed, as lon...

6 Mar 202445min