You’re blowing on the dandelions, puffing their soft seeds into the air through the neighborhood and watching them careen around the houses in the spring breeze. The cars drive by with their windows open, spewing sound. You dance. You dance to their music. Your face cracks open from joy. There’s mercy and then there is […]
Category Archives: Issue 10
Lovelorn by Santino Prinzi
It’s like walking into a hall of mirrors and seeing no reflections. Your fingers touch the glass and there’s no returning warmth. You’re missing–where are you? You turn to face another mirror–nothing. Standing in the middle of this abyss you hold hope in your palms, it’s slipping from your fingers, vanishing into the darkness. Bye-bye, […]
Cellar Shifts (IX) by Chris Bronsk
I’m down in the stock room counting cordials when the barback bundles in. He can’t change the gas for the soda gun, so I show him, joking, no quick hits. He says he’s not a red balloon. A month before he leaves he’ll tell me, at send-off drinks for the waiter he calls chupacabra, that […]
Alleging Romance by Ken Poyner
You assemble the car out of ordinary things: cabinetry, dining room chairs, a bed worn out, three chickens and an old dog from Henley’s. Its engine is the heart of a bear. You draw the choke and the heart sputters, coughs itself into rhythm, pushes blood into the axles. You proudly slip into the barbed […]
Middle-Class Magic by Jess Mize
Clear water; crisp transparent natural liquescence. Glass memory. The air up there holy. Let the sun melt into the horizon, ooze into the sea and just fade away as our memories, mirrors, and lives. Germination occurs mainly in autumn. Too much rotten human waste from the fabulous summertime. You always said life has taken you […]
Municipal Waste by Robert Beveridge
“Stop the Ebola patients from entering the U.S.”–Donald Trump (via Twitter) You’ve spent months behind the wheels of excavators so you could practice the delicate art of filling in cracks. They gave you a certificate yesterday, silly gothic font over preprinted credentials, to be presented with photo ID, W2, pay stubs, and the placental blood […]
What to Write Home About by Jenni Garber
Any cat without a face. Piercing your first penis. Chipping your first tooth. A child named Alchemy. Middle school anal sex. Tallahassee. Confederate flag tattoos. Dashboard fiber optic Jesuses. Monocles. American flag pasties. Stains in bathtubs. Peach-pie moonshine. Befriending a chicken. Coffins. Your boyfriend’s girlfriend’s baby. Storage shed movie night. The word, petrichor. A bum […]
Cicadas by Ingrid Bruck
Cicadas arrive a month later in the northeast than the southwest. In Texas they are raising mayhem by early July, they have a longer time to deafen all who live nearby with their strident calls than in the northeast where I live. It’s late summer when cicadas hatch in Pennsylvania, climb trees and start making […]
The Hat Horizon by Aaron Morris
When the sky collapsed, could no longer function as it did before, we understood pretty quickly that it had to be replaced with hats. We weren’t too sure about using the stovepipes due to their size and the way that they could obstruct both the sun and other hats, but besides that, just about any […]
At War with Ghosts by J. Todd Hawkins
We wrestle all night with them, actually. Throw them against the walls and watch them slide down to the hotel carpet, pooling in the shadows before reforming again. We have been here before, but never here exactly. We have been traveling too long, remembering too much. These strains of others’ blues coat us like road […]
Nampa by Steve Bogdaniec
Today we laid off another 5000. Some town in Idaho, not sure where. I knew a woman from Idaho once, waitress at this one dive at school. Never knew why she moved out here. Nice woman, though. Uniform was pink cotton with waves of white lace, thick chocolate brown pantyhose, tobacco perfume and crooked teeth, […]
Peacock Green by Charley Rogers
The colour is Peacock Green. Or so it says on the bottle. The shimmer catches the light, and she sparkles as she moves. Peacock Green. Bold, bright, assertive. She paints on the colour hoping its essence will seep through her nails, through her hands, into her skin, her blood. That she will become this bold […]
Man vs. Wild by Nicholas Rys
After the president was eaten alive by bears on national television the country fell into various states of dilapidation. In a rare moment of unity both fans and critics agreed it was a riveting and appropriate end to what ultimately amounted to both a condescending and overextended stay. The survivalist-themed reality TV program was previously […]
A Chat by Joanne Jackson Yelenik
Hello there Aryeh, I do want to hear your questions—the practical, about Michaeli, your day, the learning, Shabbat, what to do now, next, later, when. And more than that, our laughter, my telling of the applause at the poetry reading, your designing on the computer, the focus group reactions to my novel, your voice, how […]
On Prospect Avenue, Newark, DE by Andrew Graney
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” — Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus I just think motherfuckers wanna laugh.” — Harris Wittels, Comedy Bang! Bang! I Here you are, in your doorway, saying Andrew! saying a shot of vodka? Yes. I hate vodka. I don’t care. I’ll chase it with a joke. Your laughter—rushing down my spine—a gust of […]