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 […]
Category: Issue 29
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
by Kristin Gallagher This August, after three semesters of seeing other humans only through Zoom squares, I went back to campus and discovered just how difficult it is to recognize people who are wearing masks. Prior to returning, I had spent much of the last eighteen months looking exactly like the image in Standing In […]
by Brent Ameneyro She made the best red rice and frijoles.After the table was cleared,it was filled again with tamales—peel back the huskfind something steaming, damp,what some might call flesh-toned. After the table was cleared,something else appearedfrom the kitchen, and so it went like this all day.After the flan went cold,Mayté turned into a Crested […]
by Emma DePanise Goliath Frog Whistles to Their Lover My yellow underbelly bristles, the warmwater trickles—I’ll do the dishes every night, I promise. My elongated second toecan almost reach you. I didn’t kiss that dragonfly. This July night skysticky and wild as my tongue. I hear other kinds of frogs have the rightkinds of voices, […]
by Beth Suter Night-blooming jasminesuffuses the sleepless dark— scent of the unseen, a shiver in the belly, my forever-fishswimming a shoreless womb. Though my son surfaced, a tremor remains, his arrivalopened a door I can’t close— the door of my […]
by Ash Good Accessible File Ash Good (they/them) is a queer, non-binary poet, designer & activist in Portland, Ore. They are cofounding editor at First Matter Press (501c3 nonprofit) & a reader for Frontier Poetry. Ash’s newest collection, us clumsy gods, is forthcoming from What Books Press in 2022. Poems recently appear in Voicemail Poems, Cathexis, Willawaw Journal & others. Diamante […]
Don’t worry, I promised my mother,I’ll finish the room. She lay in the hospice bed,her chest spongy with cancer.She had me get the scrapof paper from her purse, her notes:the carpet, the table, the wicker, the paint.I stroked her skeletal hand.Then day turned its face away. Weeks later, I bought the paint, made the time.But […]
Gulf Stream Magazine 