Divine indifference / Artes reconditae
Today: Luke O’Neil, author of the newsletter Welcome to Hell World, and the story collections A Creature Wanting Form and We Had It Coming; and Rax King, the author of essay collections Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer and the recently published Sloppy.
Take care out there, everyone. See you Monday.
Issue No. 487
What it has always looked like
Luke O’Neil
Sex Tourist
Rax King
What it has always looked like
Fiction by Luke O’Neil
October 18, 2025
The four of us stumbled out across the sand in the dark toward where the tongue of the water lapped at the high tide line and stood silently for some time listening to the collected absences. The universal and the personal. My god the stars are so close and low up here one of us said and we all looked up in unison.
I thought of the Laura Gilpin poem about the two-headed calf. Then the Vincent D’Onofrio tweet about the pig.
A dwindling bonfire up around the bend of the shoreline.
Should I put on some music someone said and we all said sure by which we meant please do not and that was that. It was well past the end of the season and going to be cold at this time of night either way but the call of the water was persistent.
How much would it take for you to jump in right now one of us said and we all thought about it for a minute or two. Calculating the relative severity of wind and squealing distance back to the cottage. I guess I would do it for like $200 one of us said and it was deflating because it wasn’t enough to be excited about. No one gets a little jolt up the spine over $200.
They really were quite close and low though. These stars. This is what everything is supposed to look like I thought. What it has always looked like. I never thought I was any good at spotting the Big Dipper but turns out it’s just right there. Has been this entire time. Looming like a postcard town’s church steeple.
Keep us breathing fire!
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