Martin Olson

Hipster Hipster Party

Poetry

By Martin Olson

You are hip. You are SO hip. You are meta-hip. You were hip before it was cool. You were hip before the first Hipster Party.
You go to the Hipster Squared Party. You drink a cup of coffee. You smoke a cigarette. You see a dirty hipster. She sneers at you, and calls you a hipster. You throw your PBR in her face. It gets all over her mustache.
You take pictures on a shitty disposable camera. You get them developed. You put them on Facebook, in an album titled “Uber beaucoup de Hipster Party”. Your friends ‘like’ them. You feel validated. You are shallow. You are SO shallow. You are meta-shallow. You were shallow before it was cool.
Or not. Whatever.

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September is Octobering

Poetry

By Martin Olson

September is Octobering,
and you and I can’t hide from the wind.
I heard it was getting colder, but I never thought that it was true.
The rustling curtains, the papers blowing off the desk,
the doors that slam.
We had an uninvited guest, I thought.
It was you, I thought.

But no,
September is Octobering,
and our windows are not closed.
You and I can’t keep out the wind like this.
It’s just a matter of time till it gets in.
It’s just the wind, isn’t it?

You and I have nothing to worry about.
Well, nothing except for the wind.

September is Octobering, and
sometimes at night I wake up chilly,
with dew drops formed on the peak of my nose, and
balanced on my eyes, and
they slide across my face when I get up, and
it looks like I’ve been crying, but
it’s just because of the wind.
Nothing is the matter, and I
‘m not even cold.

September is Octobering,
and it’s just the wind, and
if your papers get thrown to the ground, and
if we both get chills in the night, and
if the door slams behind me, and
if we stay up all night, it’s
the wind.

Just the wind.
September is Octobering,
and things are alright.

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Hurricane Denny

Short Stories

By Martin Olson

Somehow, Jacob Wilde kissed Chastity Goldbern in his college dorm room, standing between the dresser, which hid bottles of liquor beneath its clothes, and the desk, whose drawers collected friends’ lighters and empty packs of cigarettes. Somehow he sat at her side and held her hand, even as she cried for his addictions and weaknesses and condemned his soul. Somehow he won the approval of both her midwestern parents and the majority of the ghosts of her ancestry, and somehow he settled down with her in Bantam, Nebraska, where she worked telling dysfunctional children Mommy and Daddy may be going to Hell, but there is still plenty of Jesus left for you. Somehow, they conceived and raised a child, Dennis Mitchell, to adolescence, and remained stable enough to serve as a loving foster family. But that is where their miracles stopped.

On the television, the afternoon news botched a convenience store robbery in Lincoln, shooting the clerk in the face before he even opened the register, then fleeing the scene empty handed, just to be killed in a confrontation with police less than a mile away.

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