Penny Jackson

Penny Jackson is a writer who lives in New York City. Her stories and poems have appeared in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, StoryQuarterly, Real Fiction, The Croton Review, The Edinburgh Review, The Ontario Review and other magazines. Her stories have been published in the collection L.A. Child by Untreed Reads and her novel, Becoming the Butlers was published by Bantam Books. She has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow in Fiction and also a Mireliies Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University.

“What Remains” and “A Hole In Her Head”

Discarded on the train tracks,
a crushed bag of potato chips,
bright red label glaring.
Two bus drivers linger
by their idling vehicles—
one bends to his lighter,
the wreath of smoke
drifting briefly

Blue Moon On Riverside

At fifteen years old, I was a pyromaniac. I would try to set my hair on fire with the fancy matches my mother collected from Manhattan’s finest bars: Lutèce, The Carlyle and The Plaza. I would steal them from a back drawer in the kitchen and my mother never noticed.

“Helter Skelter” and “Lost”

My camp counselor spoke of Charlie
as if he was sitting there
next to us at the bonfire,
the orange flames flickering across her face.
and transforming
a teenage girl,
into a gruesome jack-o-lantern.
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