cover art by Sarah J. Sloat* read issue > Brad Rose Insect Scott Hicks There Were Good Days Too Sara Backer Half of Courage is Rage Freesia McKee The Devil’s Pockets Jim Woessner Spoiler Alert Bryan D. Price Quiet and more nocturnal Pictographs Jason Gebhardt American Limbic Smoke and […]
Category Archives: Issue 27
Insect by Brad Rose
The police sketch artist says I haven’t changed a bit. Like Western civilization since 1500, I’m still not that entertaining, but thanks to my electronic tan, my digital clothes envy me. If you discount their continuous spam, their spark isn’t as bad as their light. Sometimes, I see people and they look crisp and clear, […]
There Were Good Days Too by Scott Hicks
Scattered stuffed animals and toys; the echoes of home in an empty chest–our sanctuary: fort, wagon, and ship. On the floor, the jetsam of old Tonka trucks, planes, and plastic soldiers. Three boys revel in make-believe. Cowboys riding dinosaurs or pirates: no captains, three scalawags. A voice cold as a northern storm thunders, “lunchtime, wash […]
Half of Courage is Rage by Sara Backer
We like our illness poets to sound resigned, beaten, accepting, and wise. No accurate melodramatic descriptions of poo or pus or puke: we don’t want to see the face of your suffering we want your illness to be symbolic of something larger, such as the Calvinist-rooted discrimination against the ill or the Capitalist cruelty of […]
The Devil’s Pockets by Freesia McKee
The devil carries a wristwatch with a broken strap. When you ask her for the time, she pretends the battery is also dead. And that’s how you never leave her room, small and hot. There’s no comfortable place to sleep. When she comes home each day after completing The Devil’s Work, she lies and says […]
Spoiler Alert by Jim Woessner
On page 79 we learn of Sheila’s true motivation, which is nearly lost in a sea of red herrings. Sheila wanted Jack dead not because of his numerous infidelities and unprotected sex. She simply wanted to wipe the persistent smirk off his face. Unfortunately for Jack, she wiped off more than just his expression. You […]
Quiet and more nocturnal by Bryan D. Price
now heavier because I am really desperate to get you on the phone give you this note involve you in my epistolary novel about (or pieced together from) old photographs fragments of conversation profane marginalia old tapes I have of us listening to the night noise outside our window the instinct has always been to […]
Pictographs by Bryan D. Price
now you are reading naked in bed from a book about yoga it is unashamedly hot in here surpassed only by a rare day in the fifteenth century when someone (or some godlike force) let all the steam out of the core and the oceans reversed themselves I have asked for a similar reprieve—nothing like […]
American Limbic by Jason Gebhardt
Mister Rogers tiles BLANKET for a Triple Word Score, then rests his hands on his knees and smiles. Center stage, the game board is agleam with letters. The audience applauds. Stage right, atop a stubby Doric column, an amygdala drifts jellyfish-like in the pale translucent liquid of its jar. The twin organ resembles two melting […]
Smoke and Wake (a Poem in the Form of the State of Wisconsin) by Jason Gebhardt
Jason Gebhardt’s poems have appeared in many journals, including The Southern Review and Tinderbox, and his chapbook Good Housekeeping was published in 2016. He has received multiple Artist Fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts. >
Opera Template by J. Paul Dutterer
Seduce a peasant. If you do not know what a peasant looks like, seek a woman with an expression of superhuman purity, probably wearing a kerchief, an apron, and maybe even wooden shoes. Find out that she is your archenemy’s sister. Vow undying love anyway. Arrange to be surprised in the act by someone, preferably […]
Dive Bar by Josh Joseph
Sometimes I drive to an unfamiliar town and pull in at the most miserable bar it has to offer. The scene is always similar. Cigarette smoke swirling beneath yellow-stained light fixtures fixed above the heads of yellow-stained people. Old-timers. Frail in both appearance and demeanor, lighting the next smoke before the first is done. In […]
The White Church on White Church Road by Josh Joseph
There’s a church nearby. Modest in size. Too small to hold any sort of substantial flock. Here, everyone is greeted by a handshake and a name. Their kids are asked after. Out back a small cemetery rents time in eternity. The tenants sleep through the comings and goings of deer and foresight-gifted squirrels. Only mild […]
Zeus Gets a Ticket by Ian Willey
Zeus is going 60 in a 45 mph zone when a siren screams and a booming voice orders him to pull to the side of the road. He stays in the car with the window down a crack as a cop comes up and asks if he knows why he has been pulled over. Almighty […]
Cynthia by Lauren Turner
I walk up the steps to the apartment where we live, beside the college. Everyone who lives here attends the college, except you. It’s autumn: your stack of scarves almost entirely obscuring your face, but I know you’re in there. Last week, you left a series of notes on the walls admonishing your fellow tenants […]
The Secret Knowledge of Backroads by Lauren Turner
For Henry ‘Gip’ Gipson There’s no app for being stuck at the train. There’s not even a feature in the map app for that. They have built the internet so tall that our faces lead double lives within a Cloud, but when the train stops—we’re all catapulted […]
The Lake Will Provide by James R. Gapinski
The supermarket slides into a sinkhole. Our garden fills with rotten, slimy things. Deer and small game are specters. Dad says the lake will provide. The lake is black and deep. Its surface is smooth, like glass. Even on windy days, when the trees creak and bow, the lake is glass. Always glass. We drop […]