Issue 29 (Fall 2021)
Editorial
Between Here and There
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…
Fiction
Biscuits
by Stephen Dean Ingram Eastern Kansas, 1974 “Ouch!” His forearm grazes the inside of the oven as he pulls out the baking sheet. On the sheet are ten hard brown disks. Nothing like the golden-topped flaky biscuits he remembers. He puts the baking sheet on top of the stove and watches them. They look like…
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…
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,…
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…
Creative Nonfiction
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…
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…
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…
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…
Goliath Frog Poems
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,…
The Florida Room
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…
Another PTSD Poem
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…
Theme Park Polaroids
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…
The Search
by Brent Ameneyro I walk past the half-finished cinderblock buildingthe not yet blooming Jacarandasand the police lightsturning the laundromat bluein search of a floweror a churchthat could make me feellike the child licking tamarindotalking to himselfI watch two volcanoes at sunseton the left a woman sleeps or dies of griefshe glows every night in the horizona warrior…
What Happens After
by Brent Ameneyro She made the best red rice and frijoles.After the table was cleared,it was filled againwith 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 turnedinto a Crested Caracaraand blew the napkins…
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…
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 …
Issue 29 Staff
Faculty Advisor
Denise Duhamel
Managing Editor
Kristin Gallagher
Fiction Editor
Natalie Satakovski
Creative Nonfiction Editor
Brittany Owens
Poetry Editor
Madison Whatley
Readers
J. Armelle, Yael Aldana, Andrea Greenfield, Arnaldo Batista, Madari Pendas, Amanda Johnson, Jordan Hill, Sophia Tirado, Ranijun Ruado.
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Cover artist
Charles Chau is a Hong Kong-born contemporary artist currently residing in BC, Canada. He has been commissioned to create a Chinese history mural in Kelowna, and a documentary film about the mural was listed in the “10 Best” China’s Roots Film Awards 2020. He has had solo exhibitions in Hong Kong, Beijing, Vancouver, and one upcoming in Tokyo.
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