Author: TTR

  • Ken Robidoux

    So It’s Wednesday and Celeste is Dead A couple pitchers of Natty Light, maybe three, at the Oasis and every fifteen minutes a middle-aged stretch mark spins on a brass pole behind the bar to Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Poison, this time it’s Warrant “Cherry Pie”… Half a dozen silent sweaty fat guys, whose sweaty fat…

  • Ken Robidoux

    Turn Smile Shift Repeat Like someone that’d say veranda instead of porch, I woke up this morning in an angry bed. All six comforters, both feather beds, eight pillows and three stuffed animals wrapped around me. Playing melodramatic, all distraught at my misfortune, I wrangled an arm free and lit a cigarette (don’t tell my…

  • Ken Robidoux

    Simple Desert Skies                               for Tom Sydow Train, Train, rolling wheels tumbling, You beat steel beam and bravado. Clank and cacophony are your contradictions As syncopated earth rhythms sing your song. Ground gives way. Iron trestles groan. Mountains become tunnels, territories sutured by your timbre. You dealt destiny in your glory days. A train stop meant…

  • Ken Robidoux

    Shaking Cursive She said she didn’t recognize me anymore, that there are bullet holes in the swing set at Graceland, something about her cat with twelve toes, and cancer, she said she had cancer. I watched her shoulder twitch as she spoke. She never took her eyes off the Hollywood freeway as we passed the…

  • Ken Robidoux

    Home             for Pops Rolling through a sleeveless summer night, resting on my back in the oil-soaked wooden bed of my grandfather’s ’57 Chevy, the moon spins on my tennis shoes, the dusky smell of truck mixing with groves of oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that blanket our valley. Wind teases me softly. I pull back the…

  • Ken Robidoux

    Photograph                       for Hannah In this one you sit crossed-legged, facing me, holding a pair of drum sticks. The honey glaze on the wood draws light from a bay window. We sit, just the two of us, each playing some song now forgotten in our walk-up overlooking the bay. You are still in diapers and your…

  • Justin Phillip Reed | TTR Student Staff Book Review

    Click here for a book review of work by Carl Phillips.

  • Gerstler, Gordon select 2012 prize winners

    Click here to find out who won our 2012 prizes in fiction & poetry.

  • A Section from Pin it on a Drifter by Andrew Grace

    TTR is pleased to present poetry from Andrew Grace.

  • Andrew Grace

    from Pin it on a Drifter I can tell you about my boy. He seems to have some truce with distance. He was born with his eyes open and has never known awe since. Once, a field snake traced a wave across our floor during supper. Even his father gasped. My boy watched our shock…