Everlong_acoustic.wav by Travis Dahlke
"On Monday mornings, we find the remains of teenage weekends"
TRAVIS DAHLKE is a writer from Connecticut with work appearing in Joyland, Pithead Chapel, Electric Lit, HAD, and Juked, among other journals and collections. He is the author of Mount Summer (Out to Lunch Records, 2021) and Milkshake (Long Day Press, 2022). His novel Green Bears is forthcoming from Malarkey in 2027. Find more at travis-dahlke.com.
I am in love with the water colors and the prose - perfection.
The form here is doing so much work. Watercolors that feel like memory itself, and then those stark typewritten blocks of text dropped into them like found objects, slightly out of place but completely right. "On Monday mornings, we find the remains of teenage weekends" is such a strong framing, and the image of skiing across the vacant country club golf course carries that same mix of longing and gentle absurdity. Dahlke always makes me feel like I'm reading something that happens before or after the story we usually get. That's a rare thing.