By: Brian Goad I walk down the street to the dealer's kiosk "Four hundred and fifty, please" receiving back a faintly glowing stack of slides, no thicker than a quarter the slides come to life in my hands, showing endless wonders, infuriating injustices, people just like me I flip through the deck, time melting, spent slides lost somewhere in the room, the only light scattered on the floor across piles of dirty clothes dissolving into darkness when the dealer closes shop, he

By: Molly Mayhead Fishermen in hip waders and denim perforate the surf’s edge swapping stories of the one that got away, push their dories from sand into sea, muted reds, blues, browns, exotic insects suspended in undulating aquatic resin to bring home sea’s treasure. Men with crumpled grocery bag faces and shadowed eyes look beyond the horizon, captain boats Penny Jo, Sally, Carpe Diem, Smooth Sailing, Sweet Spot, The Limit— a confessional of lovers and possibility. When s

By: Elisa Carlsen not saddle broke but broke ass upside down pissing time too big for your britches girl, someday someone is gonna knock you up or knock you out and what are you gonna do then? I’m gonna run like horses until there is no gallop no ground no canter no star no planet no X, no Y no U Elisa Carlsen was born and raised in the high desert of Northern Nevada. A contemplative poet and artist, her writing has appeared in Lunch Ticket, Scapegoat Review, Carte Blanche, A

By: Darren C. Demaree The flowers come & I try to whisper, even if I’m too old for that kind of kiss, I try whisper to them to fill my body with a new season, something blue-green that will cling to sun- light even half-buried. I’m enough of burden on this world to get no real answer. It’s calming. Nothing is ever whole. The bloom breaks us into pieces. Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-four poetry collections, most recently “Now Flourish Northern Cardinal”, (Small Ha

By: John Dennis My mother kept plants that frightened me. Large tropical things with split leaves and hanging roots that drank sunlight greedily from the windows. At night, they changed shape. At least I believed they did. The monstera beside the hallway seemed larger after dark, its shadows opening across the wallpaper like hands. My mother spoke to them while watering. Not lovingly. More like negotiations. After she died, the apartment became impossible by degrees. First ca

By: Kathy Pon She stumbles and friends pretend not to notice, and she pretends too. She stumbles on her blind spots, ruptured truths, struggles and backslides in slicks of self-doubt. As she stumbles, she faces her flaws, is humbled by her clumsiness. Strangers stare at her clunky shoes while they tie their own laces tighter. Shuffling on shaky terrain, she does not expect her body will become graceful, only prays her legs won’t buckle. Stumbling lands her in dark places, fum

By: William Ross The minutes of this night grow fat and sluggish, leaving a thin trail of wetness in the tangled garden – a tear climbing the face to fall back into the eye. A song sucked out of the air is pulled into the radio and the dead risen from sleep discover they are still dead and, even worse, alone. Between heartbeats there is a moment of not beating, when the eye, in total darkness, still sees but sees nothing. A waste of the senses which long to touch and hold, ta

By: Mary Paulson Leave me silent as the tree that crushes me in the forest and no one can hear but wish me well, wish me bright as a yellow spotted moth. Leave me to dream myself writing in celestial patterns, clear as hieroglyphics— to grieve not, forget not, this knot like gum in my hair. Leave me for another day, a neon fire burning away daytime sky and let the mercurial evening blues arrive again. I’m through whispering entreaties to the old black beasts guarding your hea

By: Clay Hardy Another sand dollar fell. Cracked, cold, and discarded. Shadowed under boardwalks. Listening to echoes of each footstep creak. But eventually surrendering. Tumbling along the tides. Soon forgotten and pulled out to sea. With shadows of gulls soaring above in an orange sunset sky. One last final moment to grasp. And dream of what was left that could still be. Clay Hardy is a fiction writer based in Portland, Oregon. His work has been previously been published by

By: Aubry Snow Dime store diner girl college town slew of drunk idiots babbling ‘bout frats and fears and “Can I have another side of feta?” My grin bloomed like the grease on their faces as they ate. I’m a glutton for observation. Black and white tiles alternating, a grimy, deteriorating vestige of the 50s. Big neon sign a stamp branded to my eyelids, my ugly moon. 12 hour shift, feet cracking, legs fat and swollen. I might have liked some roller blades, bejeweled with bayon

By: Alicia Sometimes Event Horizon Telescope, May 12, 2022 how we always wanted to know what was at the center of it all a sense of generational longing only cured by operatic narrative supermassive black hole shadow glowing ring with cavity puncture from far: brooding, slumberous closer: orange-red smouldering fast spinning silhouette wreath devouring infalling surrounds gas, debris swirling its perimeter as stars slingshot around the rim the interstices between itse

By: Kathryn Hall With the necessary zip pouch for pencils and three-ringed, it balanced on the arm, left, the elbow tucked above the hip. No closed for today possibilities except on the walk to and from. How steadfast the moss filled the letters spelling the names of streets stamped in concrete, soft, as one stepped off the curb. How thoughtful the green canopy above, promising tomorrow, tomorrow, leaf, leaf, a bell so unlike the rattle and shuffle of slam or bunk. Reading th

By: Valyntina Grenier It’s a good thing I’m no Van Gogh Here for an hour here unhinged some neighbor’s friend fresh can snap dust burst stark yellow hollow orphan day snaked through cornsilk coiled in corn flour we spin us in the dust devil of spirits we love we how old we and ankle yet hour till hour(s) ours our ours The feeling second I inhale vapor I want to embrace her get right to her hummingbird zoom our hearts catching take plunder there’s no time to w

By: Erika Seshadri my guest unspools his threadbare comfort before me laid out in imbrication, incomplete dauntless we set to work filling gaps with costume jewels and thrifted memories from a calico dress once pleased with our handiwork my guest collects his prize clinging to succor of plastic, twine, and cloth he returns to the wasteland where he shines Erika Seshadri lives on an animal rescue ranch with her family. When not caring for tame critters or feral children,

By: Josiah Patterson Wheatley Hands smeared red under fingernails the studio window a sigh & sight of birds in the background scolding. Feel the cold heaviness of earth, malleable tender as meat. Wet upon the spinning wheel by thin hands pressed & shaped diaspora of clay. The trickling light feeds the colors, bruised to beige into tools for hungry lips. Across the field hands cracked & calloused flick the sickle shave the flax like hair from their heads a thousand bundled sta

By: Bradley Nordell Who are we but words Bleached torn jeans poets Addicts washed up along a shore Old hippies counting crows Seashell remembrances Dust bowls and days of old Lost time in empty romances. Worlds swept by lonely street light cities Bled under wooden bridge creaking Instruments out of tune and daylight Fading before noon. Those green skies Before the thunder and twisters Before the olden days. We wonder As lost time takes our youth away Sitting in the dusk of tr

By: Eugene Marckx We should have known when he sold his sailboat he couldn’t live there anymore – afraid he might slip off “into the drink” – we should have known One time on the phone he let slip that he’d fallen in the grocery parking lot and needed help to his car “Don’t you have someone nearby you can call?” I was afraid for him – he quit calling then except on my birthday – two days late in a slur so bad I had to play the voicemail over and over to decipher his words I c

By: Melissa Ridley Elmes As a nervy, anxious, maladroit child I chewed my fingernails till they bled, peeling them away layer by layer, then gnawing the cuticles into submission— as though all my anxiety resided there, as though removing that skin would silence the disquiet within. “Leave your poor nails alone,” my mother said, “or you’ll never have pretty hands.” But Alecia on the bus said I was ugly as roadkill, and Angela on the bus said I had a dog’s face, so I was pretty

By: Lily DeWitt ⟟ e main st & n high st day does a trust fall into night’s arms. the city’s stars are its people. ⟟ n high st & northwood ave the sidewalks love the feet that walk on them. i too have an obsession with being useful. ⟟ n high st & patterson ave the man next to me has tattoos wrapping around his legs, like how i wrap myself in shadows. i want to ask him what it feels like to be art. i want to ask him what it feels like to put needle to skin in a

By: Sarah Paley Do you think much has changed since then? The mile markers are still there. In photos they look like plain white head stones – anonymous – like a battlefield in France. The barn is unrecognizable – rehabilitated. Chicken coops are long gone they were always an eye-sore, a problem. Jumping from coop to coop the jagged edge of the tin roof tore your leg from ankle to thigh. They wrapped you in newspaper as if you were a fish. You lay in the back -- in the front,

By: Rachel R. Baum I don’t remember you said, the fork in your veined hand trembled and I think, we are talking about your father, not some stranger. This is you, picking at fried catfish it was what you ordered, but not what you wanted you always get that confused. He worked long hours, you told us made sacrifices on your behalf this is you, gazing up at the pedestal where you placed him long ago. Once, a truth blurted out, a recollection cat-o-nine-tails wrapped

By: Susan L. Leary I often worried when I got the call, I’d be unprepared. But the morning my brother dies, all the good clothes in the house are clean. So I tell myself to get on with it. & later, standing over my brother, I think whoever prepared his body must love what they do. Because he looks so clean. Cleaner, even, than when he’d doze on the couch midafternoons to Hank Williams or Johnny Cash. The fatigue of living wiped from his cheeks. & today, as then, the same stil

By: Joshua Sinel That rain Over there Coming in Will march With tiny feet In soldier rows Clamoring and crowding Pushing and rolling Knees over knees Tiny little diamond feet Tap-tap-tapping bending blades moving along singing the secret soldiers’ song To stop for a moment the rock of rocking chairs on broken floors beyond repair the back and forth the tit-for-tat and all the endless this and that Joshua has had stories published in Quarterly West, Sequoia, the anthology Ame

By: Lindsay-Rose Dykema It was just a (series of) misunderstanding(s) starting with my saying let’s be mono -- a few months later I started flirting with someone you labeled it ‘emotional affair’ but I just figured I’d forgotten to add ‘for now.’ Is monogamy death or paying taxes? (then you should have known it was only for now) death, taxes, and the ennui of never-ending Sisyphus laundry (you won’t be done with it until you’re lying on your deathbed sheets) and the greatest