The demon tree was swollen with bloom. We stepped lightly around it, not so much to prevent the demons from awakening, but because the demons had started ripening and falling, and we did not want to step in one. A boy approached, carrying a stick. Other boys approached, carrying bigger sticks. People pushing strollers hurried […]
Category Archives: Issue 15
The 45th President of the United States and I Went to Church by Grant Gerald Miller
The 45th President of the United States and I went to church. The sermon opened with the preacher asking us all to pray with him to God the Father. During the prayer, the 45th President of the United States nudged me. I opened my eyes and he had an open hymnal. On one of the […]
A Losing Game by Howie Good
You should invest in failing, invest in losing, move around like a fish, searching for possibilities. You should create a room to get lost in, a room with what is billed as “the worst view in the world.” Do you see the donut? Do you just see the hole? But if you see the hole, […]
Breath in the Marsh by Joseph Dante
The calamus rises as the sun dips below the marsh water. I look for trails of ripples, afraid of creatures that may bite, sting, or devour us. Born under grey, whistling skies, I’ve never been so hot. Our clothes cling to us. Your gloves touch my slick back, reach under the green murkiness. I agreed […]
Part I. by Josey Rose Duncan
You are here and I am home. Wait to let out light, to swallow. Iris as parted lips. Grab, wild, at shoulders. Trace the lengths of our soft edges to our elbows, to our knees, and back. You kiss my toes and it’s not a cliché. I spider my fingers over the top of your […]
All Right, I’ll write it down… by Julie Oldham
So, I’m on the stairs halfway down—or up—depending on how you see it. And I’ve just come out of the room at the top. The room is a bedroom. And I start to walk down—and I’m looking at my hands. And they’re shaking. And I see him. He’s half way up, or down, depending on […]
Black Dress by Kenneth Pobo
My Aunt Maggie, whom we called Aunt Saggy, because she sagged and we were mouthy kids, came to birthday parties, Christmas, and Thanksgiving, saying almost nothing, keeping her beige purse close to her legs. Mom only invited her out of pity. “She’s got no one. And a police record. When she worked for that rich […]
Wrong Turns by Kyle Hemmings
I didn’t get a good look at the cab driver’s face at first. I gave him the address where my ex-girlfriend lives, the one I’ve been stalking for weeks after she dumped me like a bag of stale potato chips. I was planning for another confrontation and this time I wouldn’t be at a loss […]
Will You Offer Me Your Hunger? by Louise Mangos
This is the fourth night, and I’m still waiting for you. You promised you would come. I think I hear the creak of your footfall on the porch, and my heart thumps with delicious anticipation. But it is only the wind. It has blown the clouds from the moon, diffusing a cold, ghostly light. I […]
After the Second Miscarriage by Marybeth Rua-Larsen
Your embers, still with the blush of blue flame, are in no hurry to ash, and like Batman, who secretly hoped to learn the samba and kept waiting for his chance, you rehearse the mechanics of becoming. Nothing and no one wants to go back to tabula rasa or rhyme runes when they could keep […]
Hard Like That by Monica Flegg
At first, we closed only the screen door which allowed air, breath and feelings to sift through. My heart was root bound. Shoots slid under the screen, across the mossy threshold—stretching back to you. The storm door needed to be closed. We shut it slowly like an ice cube watering an orchid. I turned the […]
pumpkin spice & tumbleweed by Nicole G. Corrigan
i’m a clerk. just a clerk. some might say i fancy myself a barista. that i fancy too much. that it’s too fancy. not real. a barista, that is. in italy, no one fancies themselves a barista. they are coffee makers. the people who serve you coffee. so i guess some would say i’m that. […]
Still by Paul Beckman
The fog rolled in and settled a few feet off the ground rising up ten feet or more. The tree trunks were covered as were the cars left where they were because the governor forbade any driving. People walked in and out of the fog and they, like the buildings and trees, turned sepia colored from […]
Some dissembling required, I admit by Richard Weaver
the world is not my oyster, not my cray-craw-or-crabfish, mudbug, yabby or crustacean of choice. I don’t crack bivalves to harvest who or what I am. I eat them with sauce, spicy, spicy sauce, fresh made with real horseradish and enjoy the slithering as they make their way down. But philosophy, ontology, whatever osophy or […]
Saltwater Tea by Thomas O’Connell
For obvious reasons, the vampires prefer the beach in the off-season. The nights are longer and the crowds have dispersed. From the bus stop it is only a few blocks through the boarded beach houses, passing over dune grass and stray bottle rocket sticks to get to the low moonlit waves. The vampires crawl into […]
On Pets and Sharp Objects by Thuy Dinh
Her mother’s hen was named Lucky. Lucky wasn’t lucky. Her grandmother killed Lucky on the eve of their evacuation from the country to the city. She urged, “We should eat Lucky. He was our friend. Now we need him for food.” On the eve of their evacuation from the country to the city, her mother, then […]
One More Bad Day by Tracy Mishkin
I burn words. Wrong and right fuse. I pick at my thoughts like sores, twist in hot wind. What’s the use? I smoke, throw stones at my own home. I slink off, come back the same, my head the butt of a charred torch. Damn the sun that blasts my cool dark room with light. […]