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Pity Party rejects Theory of Mind. Publish with us.

  • Amy Winehouse Movie

    Marisa Crawford

    I don’t remember much about the Amy Winehouse movie
    Except of course that it is not a movie, but the story of her life

    And in it she’s in love with someone, some ugly and stupid
    guy who doesn’t deserve her at all. Her bulimia, her addiction,

    obviously her genius all feel like real life, but for some
    reason the boyfriend feels like just a character in a movie

    It’s too sinister, really. How thousands of people can see it
    In the theater and in real life but she can’t see it

    She writes the best songs about him, his dumb
    ugly face that doesn’t deserve her pretty one

    Her beautiful brain thinking about him at all
    She should move on, so crystal clear it is to all of us

    But she doesn’t. A beautiful genius, Amy
    And unbelievably she dies instead

    Sometimes I think about your funeral
    And it makes me so scared to stop talking to you

    Which is ridiculous: thinking about anyone’s funeral
    Would make you want to talk to them, no matter who

    At your funeral. What would I say?
    I want you to know that I was the one that he loved?

    No, of course you can’t say that at a funeral
    But maybe someday down the road

    Maybe someday down the road
    Or maybe sometime before

    Marisa Crawford is the author of the poetry collections Diary (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023), Reversible, and The Haunted House. She is the editor of The Weird Sister Collection (Feminist Press, 2024), and co-editor, with Megan Milks, of We Are The Baby-Sitters Club. She lives in New York.

  • 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 Works & Days

    Gina Myers

    Everybody’s working for the weekend
    Unless you’re working for the Clampdown
    The Jam sing, If we tell you that you got two days to live
    Then don’t complain
    John Maynard Keynes thought technology
    Would advance enough to give us
    A 15-hour workweek
    And David Graeber pointed out that it probably has

    +

    If you only worked 15 hours a week
    What would you do with the rest of the time
    Read, write, maybe keep a garden, prepare meals,
    Talk to your neighbors, spend time with family,
    Volunteer, exercise, and relax too
    Basically feel fulfilled and connected to community

    +

    The Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last”
    Gets to the heart of it / Henry Bemis wants to spend his time reading
    But everyone gives him a hard time about it—his wife going as far
    As crossing out all the words in a collection of poetry and taunting
    him with it
    During his lunch break at his job at a bank, he hides away in a vault
    So no one can disturb him while he reads
    When he emerges, he discovers
    He is the lone survivor of a nuclear attack
    He walks among the ruined world in despair
    Before discovering all the books in the library are still intact
    And he has all the time in the world to read uninterrupted
    That is, until he stumbles—his glasses fall from his face and break
    So he sits, surrounded by books, unable to see

    +

    This is the fear: that we go through our lives unable to do
    The things most important to us, everyone making demands of our
    time
    The working condition says there will never be time enough
    Or as the Dead Kennedys say in “At My Job”:
    Thank you for your service and a long career
    Glad you gave us your best years

    Gina Myers is the author of four books of poetry, including Works & Days (Radiator Press, 2025) and Some of the Times (Barrelhouse, 2020). She lives in Philadelphia where she co-edits the tiny with Ebs Sanders and Cul-de-sac of Blood with J †Johnson and Jaime Fountaine. Her excerpt was previously published in Works & Days (Radiator Press).

  • Strawberry-Blonde Raccoon

    Taylor Cornelius

    What I want to mention is the strawberry-blonde raccoon 
    I saw on Instagram and the partly-wild hawks in Prospect Park. 
    If you’ve seen a hawk eat a bird, then you know a thing or two. 
    The morning field, muddy and misted, 
    sun cracking through the eggshell sky 
    and the kind of afternoon light that sets my teeth on edge. 
    At what point does indifference make me a little bit happier?
    I’ve been more relaxed recently. 
    Please don’t try to sell me anything based on my face. 
    At dinner Maddie asks, is Venice the one with the rivers? 
    The fish tanks in the nursing home 
    need a dose of reality. Get it over with and take a plane to see
    Italy unspooled into the bigness of the sea.

    Taylor Cornelius is a poet, artist, and writer from Denver. She is the recipient of the 2015 Academy of American Poets prize at Kenyon College, and a former Kenyon Review fellow. A recent graduate of New York University’s MFA program in poetry, she currently lives in Brooklyn.

  • Poetry is the Province of Thieves

    Rob Hogan

    Was it a dream
    or did you dance between laser beams
    and say to me
    that poetry is the province of thieves?

    or did you mention
    as you lifted the frame from the wall
    that this wasn’t your first Mardi Gras?
    When I spoke to the law, I forgot what I saw.
    I can’t say I’m from Arkansas,
    so I say I’m from nowhere at all.

    The halls of the heart
    are lined with masterpieces.
    Strap me to a rocket.
    The valves of the heart,
    are protected with a riddle.
    The lotus is a locket to a lock pick.

    Hand in glove
    and a dagger dimpling
    my soft abdominal flesh.
    “Don’t make a scene,”
    she whispered to me,
    “poetry is the province of thieves.”

    This is blood in my nostrils,
    the primordial flaring in a leopard’s eye.
    Beyond my palm
    where treasures lie,
    my lust draws me ever
    to that other side.

    Compelled by prohibition,
    darkness is perfect,
    your verse I steal in the night.

    Rob Hogan is a Brooklyn-based poet hailing from Arkansas and Texas. He enjoys a lot of pursuits: acting, singing, drawing, hypnosis, soccer, going to Rockaway too much, but before anything else, he was a poet! Last year, Rob put out his own poetry book, Imaginary Archery Club, and he co-hosts a reading series, All My Little Words, with fellow poet, singer, and Pity Party reader, Julia Vassallo.

  • Untitled 3

    Sarah Osit

    I want to give him room
    To breathe
    Desire it greatly
    With the breathe
    Comes fluidity
    With fluidity
    Comes trust
    With trust
    Comes more
    More
    more
    more
    more

    Deserving of
    Rightly so
    Justice, pine, hair, woman, you and I
    Thank you Robert Hass
    For I no longer can pretend
    I have the words still
    Longing we say because desire is full of endless distances
    Trascendslifetimes
    One word

    Keep meeting at the so called
    Sore spots
    Only when inner growth needs to happen
    Do his hands somehow find a way
    To touch me
    I do not
    move

    A funny game we play
    do you like it?
    I am asked

    I thrive in it
    Eat popsiscles
    In it
    Get off
    In it
    Funny game

    After his set
    he says
    “Did you see me look at you?”
    he continues
    “I could only see your shape”

    Sarah Osit is a poet living in Brooklyn New York. A NY native, she has been a featured reader at KGB, Pete’s Candy Store and Jefferson Market Library. She runs a bi monthly poetry mic called Bad Words in Bushwick. Several of her poems can be found in print in the monthly PITS (poetry is a team sport) zine. She wants you to know you look beautiful today.

  • 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 The Crow

    Emmy Wildermuth

    And so, their game continued, though the rules were different. Instead of gifts of gems and glass, his offerings were met with silence and sourness. Through the window next to her enclosure, the treetops emptied and the forest fell silent. No creatures scampered through the frozen brush. No winged bodies speckled the gray sky. The two friends were alone in the world.

    Days passed. Then weeks. Then months. Each passing second filled with an unshakeable desire to prove to her that they could be happy here. That they were happy here. He prepared her favorite foods. Lit her candles of pine and oakmoss. Adorned her cage with flowers, harvested and dried from his garden. Read her poems and strummed her love songs meant only for her ears. And still she remained unmoved with her wings folded and her back turned, peering out at a world to which she no longer belonged.

    At night, he often woke to the cling cling cling of her beak against the metal bars surrounding her. Testing it. Testing him. Testing the safety and companionship he so willingly offered.

    Quiet, you. Words that did not belong to him using his lips. You protest over what others wouldn’t even dare dream to possess.

    And the clinging would stop, and the night would fall silent once more.

    It was a cold evening in February when he first noticed them. The feathers furnishing the bottom of her cage. Layers of her peeled back to reveal the raw pink skin beneath. Still, she sat, perched in the center. No gifts. No words. Nothing to offer but a whisper of her company.

    That thing, that bitter voice of loneliness, stirred inside him.

    How dare you? He screamed. The tray of the supper he’d prepared for her slammed into the wall beside her cage. Where have you gone? Why would you leave me here?

    The thing squeezed tighter around his brain. Matter lodging beneath its claws and filling the cracks between its fingers.

    I give you everything, and still you turn your back to me. I share my food and warmth and love, and you give me nothing but silence.

    His hands, boiling with ice-cold rage, gripped the bars, and he pressed his face against them.

    What more could you want from me?

    To this, she finally turned. Her dark eyes flared as they met his, wild with desperation. Slowly, delicately she dismounted from her perch and tapped her beak, just once, against the door’s latch.

    No. He retreated. Hands, still thrumming, ran through his hair and fell to his side. I can give you anything, but I could never give you that.

    And with that, he turned away and left her, hungry, in a room filled with darkness.

    Emmy Wildermuth (She/Her) is originally from Littleton Colorado. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma with degrees in Professional Writing and Modern Dance Performance. Emmy is currently a dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company as well as a choreographer and dance film maker. She is passionate about artistic accessibility and creating spaces where people can interact with their creative instincts. Emmy loves to crochet, read, craft, and spend time with her senile chihuahua named Chimichanga.

  • Marble

    Felix Torres

    Rough in the wide-eyed red light I sumi’d a treasure

    W H *

    Pine soot in the bath water
    Ink. Sponge whatever

    Question, open question
    Marble on the kitchen table (metal)

    Stone
    Paper layer
    I will book a trip to nature
    Schedule

    The elements at scale

    Felix Torres is a poet based in Bed Stuy. He has previously workshopped his poems at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop, Wendy’s Subway, and with independent poets and artists. You can find a sample of his work in Oroboro/Death Rattle and La Piccioletta Barca.

  • Third Train’s the Charm

    Sophie Rose Hinerfeld

    Bets
    on the F
    rather than the R with its shrieks, slow speed, and below ground dwellings
    I miss it by less than a minute
    but I still count my blessings
    At Jay st
    mixed messaging
    Police or
    a train stopped in front of us
    I place bets on the A
    and rush across the platform
    Our doors slide closed
    at the same time as the F’s
    and I see my mistake
    A does not stop at Broadway-Lafayette
    Rookie mistake for years stomping above and slipping through the BDFM ACE
    so time to place bets
    on train number three
    Transfer to R or W
    or 4,5
    Express
    Heaven
    Though forlorn for my perfected F to 6 sweep up frozen escalator steps
    it’s too late for two trains
    faulty bets
    Next step
    an unknown transfer
    a ticking clock
    I stumble, step on toes
    The doors flood open somewhere far below the oculus’ dome
    Forty years olds forget their hustle
    or they’re responsibly running on time
    Not I
    As I crest the escalator
    the 5 slides shut
    and open
    and shut
    and open
    and shut for good right in front of me, myself,
    my MET green umbrella, Marimekko polka dots,
    and painted anemone tote canvasing my novel and notebook
    and my breath
    remember my breath
    The 5 still, still
    the conductor swivels his head
    I pray to him
    but he rumbles ahead
    9am countdown chaos
    reeling away from the tracks smiling
    I spot a platform sign, thank gosh
    Only 2 minutes, thank god
    5 pulls in
    ‘cause 2 minutes means now
    and we soar up
    through Manhattan’s crowds
    Only two stops to 14th
    Wisdom here
    better and best exits here
    Turn through the turnstile
    and up sleepy steps
    into mist
    up and out my umbrella clicks
    What care
    What safety
    I’m doing good, dear
    8 minutes late and no one the wiser
    Two locks, two keys
    took five years to master

    Sophie Rose Hinerfeld (She/Her/Hers) is a Brooklyn based filmmaker with a love of writing. A storyteller in many mediums, she focuses on capturing the wonder of the day-to-day in her works.

    Third Train’s the Charm is part of her upcoming debut collection, Ants in my Honey, Flies in my Tea.

  • (No Title)

    Jess Wolfe

    I would like to take you with me. To whatever inundated landscape is closest or best, for some reason. The things determining the “closeness” or “bestness” is why I choose to bring you, because we both agree and I don’t have to teach you, or fluctuate, or wrap my head around some new perspective that intrigues me, or flee the coo coos nest… we just have the same closest and the same bestest code by which we live. I wait… for the day we disagree, and together get to explore the flowering lobotomy of argument.

    Here I am going to the fence. You got out of your car, stopped it on the side of the road with that small patch of tall grass, and you stand in the sun taking photos of me on your iPhone. You’ll be weary of getting too close, and I’ll turn front, back and center — showing you all my sides. Which do you like the most, by the way? I’m hoping for a pet on my nose, in that spot I haven’t itched in years, not since they changed grain and I gained that weight percolating near my neck. I’ll push my ass up to the fence, because you didn’t answer when I asked which part you like / I don’t know what you like, and I’m down to experiment, and you’ll take a step back for some reason. You’ll put down the phone, and you’ll look me in the eyes, and I’ll think “this is it.” This is where going up to the fence pays off, where you notice me, touch me, take me in completely. Your boyfriend starts walking his sketchy converse along the top of the fence down the road a bit, practicing his balance, we both turn toward his “woaaaa.” You smile and run over, following in his footsteps, I retreat from the fence, forgetting what I walked up to it for in the first place, and instead wait for the hand to place my shitty meal.

    Jess Wolfe is a writer (obviously). To show off her credibility, know that her first book was named a finalist for the changes book prize in 2024. She’ll have a second for you eventually, but in the mean time she’s working in film, using neuroscience to write into brain loops, and trying to turn her feature length script into a play. Her first poem included in the anthology was originally published by Slacker Magazine as part of her essay Communication A-Go-Go.