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fiction Issue 29

Preservation

by Christina Perez Brubaker Hanna hadn’t planned on taking the rabbits. It was one of those things that just sort of happened. An impulse her husband, Matthew, if he were still alive might’ve slapped her cheek for because according to him, nothing ever just-sort-of-happened. In a way, he’d be right. She’d been thinking about it […]

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Issue 29 poetry

Better Than Yourself

by Rachel Stempel for my future dermatologist It’s Thursdayand it’s lateand you’ve lostyour right handto scienceand your left hand’slimp Your knucklesbulgeand starecockeyed You forget howyour playground politicsmade illegibleevery          good                     thingyou got your greasy                    […]

Categories
Issue 29 poetry

What Not to Expect at a Korean Supermarket

by Jessica Kim Now watch me strangle the neck of the apricot tree,watch me grab a back of green onions and cage it in the rusty supermarket cart. Like the flight herefrom California, confined in the small body of an aircraft. The Korean peninsula devours my bodyand swallows. I wonder why I am so welcomed […]

Categories
fiction Issue 29

The Fermi Paradox

by Courtney Clute Did you know that due to the trillions and trillions of stars and planets out in the universe, it’s mathematically certain that there is some sort of intelligent life out there? But why haven’t my kind come to Earth to get me? Every night when the moon pokes through the dark sky, […]

Categories
Creative NonFiction Issue 29

What Gone Looks Like

by Leah Claire Kaminski Crazy Snail and Backseat Driver by Igor Kasev I eat my first mushrooms in traffic with my sister on Seven Mile Bridge. I’m a small notch in the metal spine of cars cooking over the hot sea. Over the old bridge running next to us like a mouth missing teeth, a […]

Categories
Creative NonFiction Issue 29

The Art of Boiling Water

by Rose Strode Water is easy to drink. Too easy, considering it’s not easy to find. Once found, one must consider its source. Water’s powerful, shaping the landscape through which it flows, yet also vulnerable, retaining in itself particles of all the places it’s been. The first time I considered water, I was twenty-seven. The […]

Categories
fiction Issue 29

The Burning

by Daniel M. Mendoza This past Sunday, the city announced a parade to celebrate the grand opening of Fanatics Hunting and Fishing Gear where Motherclucker’s Chicken Shack once operated before the incident residents collectively call “The Burning” occurred. Motherclucker’s was not open very long when it became obvious to all that it would rake in […]

Categories
Issue 29 poetry

The Search

by Brent Ameneyro I walk past the half-finished cinderblock buildingthe not yet blooming Jacarandasand the police lights turning the laundromat bluein search of a floweror a church that could make me feellike the child licking tamarindotalking to himself I watch two volcanoes at sunseton the left a woman sleeps or dies of grief she glows every […]

Categories
Issue 29 poetry

wholly her own

by Melody Serra Accessible File *Image: A New York Times clipping of “Patricia Lockwood’s First Novel Reaches for the Sublime, Online and Off” by Merve Emre, Feb. 16, 2021. Melody Serra’s passion is teaching and empowering others by sharing what she has learned. She helped launch an arts and crafts program at a children’s hospital […]

Categories
fiction Issue 29

Orion’s Dinkus

by Linda Petrucelli It is difficult to begin new things when you are nearly seventy. The ridiculous condition of your bones (the titanium implants) discourages adventure. Incidental mental lapses create doubt about the reliability of your synaptic connections. For every septuagenarian who takes up Taekwondo or learns to speak Portuguese, there are hundreds more like […]