by Mags Kingston I Can’t Fall Asleep in the Bed I Grew Up In I step over the threshold into my childhood home, and I become an insomniac all over. I am grown now, but here, again, everything is the same: the same nighttime routine, the same shampoo, the same lilac walls, the same picture […]
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Phantom Pain
by Michael Chin Phantom Pain I thought autobiography might afford me immortality. Facile as it seems now, the idea felt profound. After all, each time I immersed myself in the scene of a good book, it felt as though that moment had a sort of life to it, reanimated if only in my imagination, remembered […]
by Candace Angelica Walsh Warning Signs Your Guy Friend is a Garden Variety Creep: What You Should Know and Next Steps Ethically Reviewed by peers of Author on October 29th, 2024 Written by: Candace Angelica Walsh (she/her) 15 min read Garden Variety Creep /noun/: A person masquerading as a friend to have greater access to you, […]
by Jonathan Aibel Anti-Elegy Beyond the scrim, do the deadremember? If so, let her remember some other child,the one she wanted, a girl, too good to writeon walls, who didn’t hide in her room, unwillingto talk. I don’t want to make her into a saint —fold my memory in half, fold the corners, a paperairplane, […]
by Travis Cohen and Michael Cuervo Julie Marie Wade is an author who could serve as a dictionary entry for multivalence. She is a poet, essayist, memoirist, hybridist with so many collections of poetry, prose, and genre bending forms that her publications become difficult to enumerate, though they are all worth seeking out. Her 2023 […]
by Daniel Brennan If the act of remembering changes the memory, how can you be certain you loved him so much? an audience member asksthe Poet. A pause of silence, a shallow coughfrom someone amidst the throng gathered there.The Poet’s eyes do not carry the same greenthat they did before; something in themhas been given […]
by Daniel Brennan Every Sex Party is Home to a Prophet We peel back the black lacquereddoor like the scab from a blister. Taste the spoiled heat escaping, that thick cloud of steam as it rises fromthe iron stairwell. Everyone comes and no one goes. I learn new names for myself each time. A friend of mine […]
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Arms Full
by Angela Townsend Arms Full To the naked eye, my mother did not appear to be a bodybuilder. Fellow patrons of Thrall Library saw a dancer in Reeboks with a passing resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. She jangled in the kind of rock-candy earrings an anthropologist might wear. But my mother was capable of carrying hardcovers […]
by Travis Cohen Jonathan Escoffery is an author whose work defies both definition and expectation. His debut book, If I Survive You (MCD Books), which was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, is sometimes described as a novel, at others as a linked story collection. It is […]
by Jaycee Billington Buzzard The language of buzzards is a slow cursive:lazy, looping, skating cumulo nimbus vowelsand tilted Ts, a round glide that mimics the curveof bald heads. It’s not messy, this openness,the cyclical return to grace. So often the languageof death is harsh, all consonants, hardedges unsoftened by the feathered driftof wing, the throaty weightlessness.It’s a beautiful scrawl, this gentle handwriting,the way it […]
by Amanda Russell Mending with Milkweed (a documentary-style poem in 10 parts) 1.A mermaid dolldropped in an empty driveway— sightless eyes turned to the cloudless sky. When will the child realize what’s missing?” 2. Seeing a kaleidoscope of Monarchs butterflies around the lantana bush as big as my grandmother’s red car was as normal as the […]
by Richard Moriarty Leaving Home It’s early August in eastern Kansas, bright and quiet on the morning Charlie leaves home. Told no one he’s heading for college. Right now, his father is mowing the rough around the seventh green at the town’s public golf course where he works maintenance. In twenty minutes, Charlie’s father will […]
by Grant Chemidlin Little Quaint House outside, but stepping in, the walls were adorned with naked men. Stretched, voluptuous, leather-bound & gagged, tasteful, but for my still-closeted eyes—the silver glint of the sharpest needle. I looked both ways before crossing the hall—past the marble ass, Tom of Finland quiet on the table. It was like finding a library buried in […]
by Asya Graf Journal of Training and Competition 1. 50 Years Since Great October I’m on the floor of my parents’ living room, among piles of Soviet black and white photos that still smell like developer, and a notebook too thin for what it holds. A hummingbird’s whirr competes with the drone of a lawnmower. […]
by Scott Nadelson Forks There were two sets in the drawer. One had long tines, a curved back attached to a smooth neck, a subtle etched floral pattern at the handle’s end. This was her mother’s set, the one she’d grown up using. The second, her stepfather’s—which had occupied the drawer alone a year ago—was […]
by Toni Artuso Fire Escape A siren blares like a guilty conscience. It must be a false alarm. But the wailing continues. Above it, you hear lodgers, disturbed, chattering. Then slams assault your ears. Feet tramp down the hall. You decide to stay in the room until the all-clear. Then you hear banging on doors […]
by Robert Eric Shoemaker Poet/Artist Robert Eric Shoemaker (he/him) is a poet, translator, and interdisciplinary artist. He is the author of three books: Ca’Venezia (Partial Press, 2021), an artist’s book of hybrid writing and visual art; We Knew No Mortality (Acta Publications, 2018), poetry and memoir; and the poetry chapbook 30 Days Dry (Thought Collection Publishing 2015).
by Eneida Alcalde Borikén, 1955 En la finca at the center of the world, we meet you in your opening chapters curly haired, round-eyed Boricua stretching awake before daybreak along with her brothers and sisters, Mami waiting by the door as you line up between the bunk beds, oldest to youngest, ten boys and girls […]
by Robert Eric Shoemaker BearTrail for Stephanie Michele As the great bear criesstarshine, starshinedip one foot in the lake to test itwhile I take off my shirt, pants, shoes.Turn back to me an owleyes wide; we laugh:I am not Hercules.Comets trail. We get in the water.It reminds me of a childhood mountainwaterfall. Falls overnearly fifty feet, […]
by Lindsay Stewart Stunt girl1 I practiced insanity in the mirror to satisfythe hundreds, said my own name aloud untilit lost all meaning. Nellie, Nell-ie, Nellie.How will you get me out after I once get in?It was never a question of who I was or howlong I might be there. L gave me a spoon,E […]
by Mellissa Sojourner The Couple at the End of the World When they tell the story of their initial encounter to some newly acquired friends, they spend at least five minutes interrupting each other over the way it all began. Maya had been working as a bartender in a small outpost just off the highway, […]
by Catherine Broadwall The Selkie Agrees to an Interview When you came onto land in woman form, just what were you hoping to do? The moon was as full as a prophecy that night. I wanted to hear her aura sing. When the man snuck up on you, didn’t you sense him? The leaves were […]
by Onna Solomon State of Emergency The dream woman chases herempty car down the hillShe is me and I amwatching herfrom my own car When I reach her after hercar slowly rolls awayI hold her inmy arms her bodyfragile in a way my bodyhas never been fragileI feel the edge of hershoulder blades beneathmy hands I hold […]
by Josh English Drunk on Mystery: a review of Jeffrey Skinner’s Sober Ghost Jeffrey Skinner is among the country’s most vital living poets; his forty-some years of publishing represent American surrealism at its most charming and spiritual, his suburban landscapes infused with a soulfulness and fever that is pure Americana. However, in his newest book, […]
by Jefferson Thomas Firstborn of Kepler-452B Tahlia gave birth in the pilot’s chair, with a blanket for a smock, and the botanist for a midwife. Her skin was marbled white-brown-red, with the blue of varicose veins throughout. All of us had skins which hung about us in big elastic wrinkles, as deep as if we […]
by Lindsay Stewart Inheritance * A mountain lion sounds like a woman screaming * He taught us how to use a gunwhen we were ten, the same yearwe learned about sex and rapein the same conversation. We weresitting, very still, in the backseatand I was grateful I didn’t have tolook at her while she cried. […]
by Jessica Hincapié Removing The Watermark At the beginning of every booksomeone always telling youthat they have taken liberties with plot. List of wrong names, puzzled numbershanded to the calf skinned boys of summer.Their mask of horns an already rip. What would you do for the promiseof hearing a word held inside for yearsfinally pronounced […]
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