read issue > Ian Willey A Sad Story Limbic Limbo Plain and Simple Michael Brockley Player to Be Named Later Harrison Candelaria Fletcher Basic Training Aaron Sandberg Antinatalism Teacher, Dream Cassandra Atherton Wanderlust Moon Paul Jones Pig’s Eye The Church of the Misdirected Saints Dan MacIsaac Manx Cat […]
Category Archives: Issue 26
A Sad Story by Ian Willey
Last time I saw him was just after our wedding when after ten years he’d dropped out of college for the nth and final time and was doing the same thing he did back in high school: delivering pizzas. He was even working at the same place. In fact, the manager was one of the […]
Limbic Limbo by Ian Willey
Someone I knew obliquely through work got married and I was invited by default to the reception. I was standing off to the side by myself waiting for the right time to leave when a man who looked like the head waiter came up to me and asked if I’d seen the second appetizer selection […]
Plain and Simple by Ian Willey
I wonder what it would be like to be the parent of one of those minor characters who gets killed off early on in movies like Predator and Kong: Skull Island. How do they react when a pair of men in sunglasses drop by their homes in a post-credits scene to break the news by […]
Player to Be Named Later by Michael Brockley
For a change, you drive away from the setting sun. Steering your old Chevrolet toward the minor league towns of Ohio and the Civil War graves beyond. As a child, you collected baseball cards. Each week buying a pack of five cards for a quarter at Schlichte’s Grocery. Bo Belinsky. Pumpsie Green. And Harry Chiti, […]
Basic Training by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
Hunting each other through the South Asian jungle of our New Mexican yard as silent as toads under street lamp light our lost fathers beside us like moths in the closet drawn to photos in the bottom of a box we can never quite reach to capture or kill or just let it go this […]
Antinatalism by Aaron Sandberg
I witnessed the act of my conception but have since forgotten the details and now sit squarely in a booth smiling with friends but slowly gathering back the finer points of my creation. And with each flicker of scene like a dusty film across my eye, I feel further from grace and closer to them […]
Teacher, Dream by Aaron Sandberg
The F-plus student is chasing me down the never-ending school hall to ask what can be done as I try to hop into a locked locker but can’t recall the combination so slip into an open class to see that it’s a final and I’m naked and haven’t prepared and I fail and I wrap […]
Moon by Cassandra Atherton
i. The third night, we drink too much tequila and you sleep on the edge of my hair until noon; your body curled around me like a single, right parenthesis. I feel your breath on the rounded curve of my shoulder; respiration like a steady metronome. This is my happiest hour: three quarters of a […]
Wanderlust by Cassandra Atherton
I’m addicted to travel adapters: two or three-pronged, round or flat pins, straight or on the angle. I keep some in my desk drawer, a few in my bag and one under my pillow, that I stroke to get to sleep. The universal power adapters are my favourite, the prongs move in and out with […]
Pig’s Eye by Paul Jones
Most people have us take them out so they don’t explode when they’re cooking whole hog. In the pit, it’s not too bad. A little loud sometimes. And the mess looks like tears on the pig’s face. But cooking head-on on a spit is another matter. The first time I ever saw a pig’s eye […]
The Church of the Misdirected Saints by Paul Jones
I stopped at the entry of the Church of the Misdirected Saints to look at the carved doors. Images of small animals. Pets, I imagined. Comic as cat memes. Ferocious as their wild cousins. A paw batting at a bird. A fanged mouth carrying a lizard. A rabbit without a head in the jaws […]
Manx Cat by Dan MacIsaac
A latecomer, by dark, the full moon obscured by storm. The straggler slunk up the Ark’s wet ramp, lanky tail slick with rain. Last in. Mostly. The tom paused at the sill, sniffing the peppery scent of cypress beams and the stench from a hold rank with beasts. The great door avalanched. Laggard tail—severed. The […]
In Transit by Gwen Sayers
My father fled the morgue on New Year’s Eve, two days before we buried him. He traveled with the north wind, spitting sleet. He blew in through a keyhole with his fogged mind, clogged heart, and homelessness. The house shivered. I turned up the thermostat. An iridescent scarab clattered across the floor and vanished under […]
A Cautionary Tale for Beginners by Lyndi Waters
I used to think attachment was a good thing and I became a barnacle. Stuck myself to lampposts and mailboxes. My attachments had a gluttonous quality, and I would eat things like paintings of moonlight loitering on lakes, washed them down with rivulets of water licked from my grandmother’s umbrella. In my living room I […]
The Wonder Years: a Scatter Plot Analysis by Kyle Hemmings
The quiet girl next door is found dead from too little air. I loved her from a distance, from an upstairs window.*** “All god-fearing men sing like gorillas in the rain,” says Sister Maureen, who is slowly going senile.*** Mother brings home a pig and decides she can neither kill nor stuff it.*** “Is there […]
from: “I Was Told That Every Poem Was About the Moon” by Ann Pedone
I bumped into Anne Carson when she was on her way to Bendel’s. I pulled out my pocket dictionary and asked her why the entry for “sky” was a blank space. She mumbled something about Baudelaire and the relationship between Jacques Brel and The Oresteian Trilogy. I couldn’t really follow. I nodded politely and left […]
Our Lady of Dark Mysteries by Jill Crammond
The old black dog knows to turn around three times, even when all you say is lie. O Mother of rapt attention. O Mistress of Bones and Trust. How we dig holes and have nothing to fill them with. How the nuts we gather and bury are forgotten, and still we grow whole forests. This […]
I can’t remember exactly what his teacher said by Katie Richards
but I remember the knot in my stomach as I tried to hold it together in the narthex as my mother asked me what was wrong and I said James’ preschool teacher who is also his Sunday School teacher was noticing what I had been noticing and just told me and I remember the quick […]
Passing Obedience Around in a Moose Skull by Kelli Allen
The women said, you can have a daughter. The women insisted, there will be a big scene. The women begged, don’t mention the snakes. That’s the way it is with problems. Spreading the blanket over clover changes so little, but ground can be stubborn, often swallowing its own worms back down before the mallards arrive, and sometimes after they […]