by Emily Light Some Game The word for a boy dog is dog,so I yell Dog! when he pees on his sisterlike she’s a fencepost to mark,when he takes rabbits in his mouthand they scream like dog toysas if they’re part of the game.Maybe someone in his first life,his puppy life in Texas,told him he […]
Tag: Issue 34
by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz Geraniums for Autumn Sitting in the amber glow of the television screen, Elias Stray watches reruns of All in the Family. While the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom were once the servants’ quarters, the living room was part of a grand ballroom that used to occupy most of the top floor of […]
by Travis Cohen Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet and essayist, as well as a critic and connoisseur of music and culture. He is a man dedicated to bearing witness and his accolades are many and deserved. In 2021, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and he was recently named a 2024’s Windham-Campbell Prize winner. He […]
by Jose Trejo Maya (Editor’s Note: Click on the image for an expanded view) Poet/Artist Jose Trejo Maya is a remnant of the Nahuatlacah oral tradition a tonalpouhque mexica, a commoner from the lowlands from a time and place that no longer exists. Published in the UK, US, Spain, India, Australia, Argentina, Germany and […]
by Samantha Leon Richard Blanco’s Homeland of My Body is a Call Back to Our Humanity Reflection gives way to reinvention in Blanco’s nearly two-hundred-page volume of new and collected poems. Ever-generous, Blanco gives the reader broad access to his best works with over one hundred pieces that call back to the poet’s origins and […]
by Kale Hensley When the Last Trumpet Sounds, I Will Be in the Mummy Room at the Museum after Maria Rossetti, who said the opposite, presumably as a joke As a pew-child, I kept my neck tilted up, up, up. Looking, waiting. That is how I saw that the shadows of chandeliers in a back-holler […]
Categories
Patterns
by Michael Hanson Patterns I’ve had this image in my head where I’m standing in a well-lit room holding my cousin Patrick’s brain. Light fixtures flicker and the air smells like embalming solvents and I’m there alone holding Patrick’s brain, the edges of the room with that warped look you see in stainless steel, like […]
by Steve Wing Pilgrim My friend Cary once remarked that back in the ‘70s I’d occasionally declare a desire to make love to the Earth itself. I remembered having that notion, but hadn’t quite realized I’d ever said anything about it out loud (though people were making proclamations right and left in those days.) Maybe […]
By Charles Haddox Millenary El Paso I. At every hour there is brushwork, and people, birds, houses. Those kiln-baked patioswhere dogs sing to the wind. Night wanders about the night,through a derelict hotel,like bread rising in a window,expectant, filled with tears. Bare aloes, violet from winter’s embalmed terrain,or pale as some ruined watchtowerin a sky […]
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Mysophobia
by Kelle Groom Mysophobia musos, uncleanness; phobos, fear I’d love to live above ground if possible. Fly to DC, take a cab to my sublet. I’m here for four months for a writing residency. Excited to see the apartment I’ve only seen in photos. Early evening when I arrive. Building squat and square, but massive. […]
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How to Cum in Spite of–
by Brionne Janae How to Cum in Spite of– “For finally this body is open. And thisbody it is mine.” excerpt Malcolm Tariq’s Fucking a Proclamation I once had a partner who made what I thought was the saddest face when she came. I didn’t understand it—and I suppose would have worried something was […]
by T.B. Grennan Revolving Door Once there was a fat man with a little mustache who got caught in a revolving door. He worked in Midtown, at the reception desk of one of those big, postwar office buildings. It was a Tuesday, around eleven, and he had four-and-a-quarter minutes left in his five-minute mid-morning break. […]
by Hannah Matzecki Preparations for an Emergency Author Hannah M. Matzecki is a writer, mother, and the editor of Kitchen Table Quarterly. Her poetry has been featured in West Trade Review, the Ear, and Birdcoat Quarterly, as well as on any refrigerator with those little word magnet tiles. She lives in Los Angeles with her […]
by Cassandra Whitaker Wedding In The Three Chambers of My Heart Widowed Brides Embedded In My Left Shoulder Sharpen Knives ahead the banquet where they will roastpeppers stuffed with nuts, grain, and glazedwith roasted garlic; an understandingof restraint. When dancing begins the brides takeeach other by the arms. The women matchtheir eyes, match their braids […]
by Jake Phillips Broken duplex for breaking & re-entry a knuckle braced into diamond / translated / excised intothe solar plexus. this is breaking / what it feels like— solar systems collapsing / your lungs / atmosphere / venus crushing mars / burn of meteor / a universe of dust in veins / ever-expanding. air-locked […]
by Mary Gilliland Sandia Crest My brother swung off saddle. To be alive before he calleda posse of angels to his side, he walked in turbulencewithin a larger mind: I’m on two tracks—you wouldn’tunderstand—two tracks. Seven months he’d been takingthat pony for a ride. Was his oncologist’s compassioncuriosity? Leave (should he?) a hospital with underfundedwards? […]
by Amanda Gaines Four Stages of Swallowing Author Amanda Gaines is an Appalachian writer and Ph.D. candidate in CNF in Oklahoma State University’s creative writing program. Her poetry and nonfiction are published or awaiting publication in Barrelhouse, Fugue, december, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, Willow Springs, Yemassee, Redivider, New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, […]
by Josephine Defaye Strange Wives (Editor’s Note: from the book of Ezra, Nehemiah, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; “trans” truncates the words “transgressed,” “transgresseth,” “transgression,” and “transformed”) He that covereth a trans seeketh love;He loveth trans. The words of the trans. Trans on his lips. Trans by wine, enlargeth hisdesire as hell. The wicked is […]
by Lee Peterson Grounds I cannot not bear him,love him, claim him.Can you? Call me claimant, citizen,supplicant, friend. He is mine yours, oursto love and cover. His limbsbelong to me.His death a fault of all our sins.Meant—unmeant.Does it matter? Argument. Argument. Air. Author Lee Peterson is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Rooms and Fields: Dramatic […]
by Chloe Cook To Satiate the Living I Skid-mark clouds driftedwith undetectable urgency.Ofrendas of marigolds and alfeñiquesornamented most headstones. Pan dulce crumbs induced sugar-rabiesin the squirrels; horchata spillageobscured family photographs.Despite temptation, the spirits did not return. A mariachi of widowers sang beneatha hunched yew tree—its branches hunglow enough to invade a makeshift altarand pluck a […]
Categories
Lunch
by Sophia Khan Lunch 0. Tarry slivers of opium, sucked from beneath your nanny’s fingernails You have heard you were a horror: cried all night; failed to thrive. You want something ineffable. Nothing you are given ever satisfies. What is the poor woman to do? One evening when you are nine months old, you will […]
by Lauren Sharon Retreat My name is Sara Jane Felt. I am childless. Synonyms please – barren, incomplete, loser. Through a series of biological failures: miscarriages, fizzled fertility treatments, A stillbirth. Today, like every day, my husband, Danny tries to join me in my loss and grief. “I’m childless too,” he says. Maybe. He takes […]
by Gary Fincke After the Locks are Changed Home After the locks are changed, after he stops cursing and pounding on both doors, he hurls his key against the kitchen window while McCartney, her German Shepherd, yips and whines. Still, he calls several times each week, always after midnight with slurs of pleading punctuated by […]
Gulf Stream Magazine 