by Natalie Beisner This essay won 1st prize in our 2020 Summer Contest in creative nonfiction. Here’s what judge Dawn Davies had to say about it. This essay is a switchblade. You first look at it and think it is a cell phone, or a comb. Or maybe a candy bar or coupon booklet, but […]
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by Albert Leftwich shuck/SHək/ (in French, écailler) Noun. 1. An outer covering, such as the shell of an oyster (French: coquille d’une huitre). 2. A person or thing regarded as useless, worthless or contemptible, something of little value—usually used in plural, as in Ain’t worth shucks or They don’t care shucks about us. Verb. 3. […]
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A Lamentation of Swans
by Marlene Olin A lock and a key. A nut and a bolt. A child and its mother. Alone they’re nothing, their bearings unmoored, their future adrift. It was Nettie’s greatest fear that they’d be separated. And once the pandemic hit, her fears came true. She and Henry were fixtures in their South Miami neighborhood, […]
The wait is finally over! Here’s who took the top prizes in this year’s contest. To read these winning entries, stay tuned for the Issue 26 release next week. A big thank you to the judges Ashley M Jones (poetry), Dawn Davies (CNF) and Alex Segura (fiction) for selecting these great pieces. Poetry Winner [START […]
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2020 Summer Contest Shortlist
Thank you so much to everyone who sent something in & congratulations to those who made the list. We loved reading your work & would love if you sent more in 2021. This year we had a total of 160 poetry entries, 117 fiction entries, & 64 creative nonfiction entries. We’ll be announcing the winners & […]
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Amber by Travis Truax
Visual art by María DeGuzmán Somewhere in a winter that’s barely a winter my friends down south are promising each other nothing. What is warm, what is heating my life here is what’s long been kept so close. The years aren’t really measurable. Or maybe there are only miles. I’ve […]
One my grandpa used to swim through on so many boozy evenings when the rockabilly band played. When Patsy Cline crooned for locals. When as a teenager Patsy stepped down from the stage to find my grandpa’s helping hand and in the back, alone, my grandma’s jealous gaze could split the whole place in […]
after Max Ritvo and Claire Yoo Virginia, I think God is in your moving. As you go from room to room, you trace holy lines like streaks of neon, so bright my teeth ache. Sometimes when you leave a place, it’s like you’ve siphoned all the grace from […]
Lie often. When she thinks you’re her sister Pauline, talk about growing up on the family farm: jumping from the hayloft, that unheated bedroom. About the trip to Atlantic City where you rode bikes on the boardwalk, boys you kissed behind the roller skating rink, the years you worked together in the war factory. […]
Visual art by Renée Cohen Hot pink and lonely amidst road grime and weeds—a child’s stuffed whale along the freeway, tossed one day as a lesson in regret and wonder. There now under sun and rain and wind and heightened by its candid placement, like a lone shoe in […]
Turns out, it wasn’t a ghost tapping I’m still here in Morse Code at the window the whole long morning you spent pretending the day ahead might deliver something to cleave the weight in your chest, even though nothing but a rapture would do. You’ve been tired for days. You’ve got lots of excuses […]
In morning darkness I pull over and watch the heavy equipment sleeping behind barbed wire. How yellow and massive they appear under globes of halogen night lights. How strong their names: Bulldozer. Excavator. Knuckleboom loader. Feller buncher. Backhoe. Row upon row, the peaceful dreams of machines. The eastern sky glows orange. Soon I will drive […]
1 I am scared to be the oldest of us. When you were born I sat in the hospital, waiting, or slept and dreamt of your new names. I heard you speak your first words; one of you pointed at the chandelier above the dining room table and whispered pretty lights. […]
Neon Tetras, Tiger Barbs, and Rainbow Sharks swim round and round through seaweed and ferns, over moss and ornaments nestled in the coral and lava rock of the aquarium Nancy Reagan has placed in her husband’s study. Deep in dementia, the President watches from an armchair and fixates on a miniature […]
From: Crystal Hatzi <Crystal.Hatzi@yahoo.com> To: William Rocky Cuevas <Billyrock4@gmail.com> Date: February 20, 2020 8:27 AM Subject: Exit The cats are in their carriers. Or they were, at least. It was a struggle, but I did it. I’m exhausted. Panting, practically. You’d think I’d have had it down after the fire drill we had last Thanksgiving […]
Visual art by John Timothy Robinson Jess has a way with guys. She talks in ways guys get. I never thought we’d chill. Never thought I was cool enough. Then one day I come out to the big log by the quarry and she’s smoking like she’s here every day. I stopped thinking […]
Visual art by Sara Sage I. “The bathrooms are the smallest room you have ever seen. The toilet is very low and the paper is very high. Unless you’re tall and skinny, hold it.” –Melanie S. In Fell’s Point, a tourist-trap neighborhood pulsing foot traffic through Baltimore, the major appeal of each […]
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Visitors by Philip Arnold
Along my worktable in the basement, over a clutter of tools and copper pipe fittings, the skin of a snake stretches several feet. Following the quick-handed twitch of instinct, I glide my fingers over it. There is no weight to it. More void than material, the hollow of its form offers an […]
Reviewed by Von Wise Visual art by Tom Jessen A week or so before most of the world shut down due to a global pandemic, I walked through San Antonio, a city I was visiting for a literary conference and that was at the time in a “state of disaster.” Those were the early […]
From the Editor: Happy new decade! Our first work of 2020 is one that showcases just how much ground we can cover as literary citizens, writers and collaborators. Our contributors for this issue are from Miami and Seoul, are poetic icons and emerging voices. Take a moment to read to the contributors’ bios to get […]
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Issue 24 Contributors
Jan Beatty‘s work has been published in Poetry, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Best American Poetry, BuzzFeed, and Cherry Tree, with poems forthcoming in Pleiades and New England Review. My fifth book, Jackknife: New and Selected Poems, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press and won the 2018 Paterson Prize. She recently won the […]
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Bellows by Keith S. Wilson
Please click below to open Bellows by Keith S. Wilson. This piece has formatting not permitted by our site design. Visual art by C. R. Resetarits
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Praise for Catechesis: A Postpastoral
Collection Title: Catechesis: A Postpastoral Collection Author: Lindsay Lusby Reviewer: Lily Starr It is not often that I open a collection of poetry and am immediately stunned by vivid, color photos of flora, diagrams of human bones, a family of black and white sheep clustered together on the bottom of a page, or pink […]
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Not Homeless, Just Moving by Jan Beatty
I wasn’t homeless, just had my mattress in my ’69 Chevy, clothes underneath boxes in the trunk. Everyday stuff in the front-seat backpack. I moved 14 times that year, drinking and drugs but still working my waitress job. I was in motion. Driving, working, hoping to stay with a friend for a night, I was […]
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Double-Cut by Jan Beatty
Please click to open Double-Cut by Jan Beatty. This piece requires formatting not permitted by our site design. Visual art by Heidi McKye
I want you to see (me) Not past, nor through (me) Nor should you pretend (I look as you do) Nor will yourself into believing (I should) No, I want you to see (what’s here) I want your eyes to trace (the structure and dance of my lines the texture and humility their design) Heed […]
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