The Cupboard

The third volume of The Cupboard is now available to order. Play, by Mathias Svalina, is a collection of 29 games for children. You have never ever played any of them ever before.

Mathias Svalina is a co-editor of Octopus Magazine and Books. He is the author & collaborator of numerous chapbooks & his first full-length book, Destruction Myths, is forthcoming from Cleveland State University Press. He lives deep in Brooklyn, NY.

Here’s a sample:

If you draw two lines on the asphalt, about 2 feet apart then a brook will spring up between the lines. Children will then run in groups & try to jump the brook. They will scream as they are running. They will scream as they are jumping. If they land in the brook they must run home & change their stockings. The successful jumpers are guided into a white bus & driven to wider & wider brooks. The last child to make a jump is the winner. Those that fall into the brooks must run home to change their stockings. But they are so far from home & the driver of the white bus will not speak to them. There is a light in the forest. Is that a distant fire or the buttery windows of a warm farmhouse? It is difficult to tell from here, where the sleet has just begun to fall.