Fish Hanging, Tess Brown-Lavoie [Trigger Warning: Death Mention] When she was told that Charlie was dead, my mother fell limp and gasping to the earth. My father—who had answered the phone—was startled by her collapse. He somehow had not anticipated the…
Untitled, Adam Chambers Escaping the humidity at last, I collapse on the sofa, dead weight melting into the cool white leather. She brings me water and sits on the stone ledge of the fireplace, lighting a blue American Spirit,…
Untitled, Benjamin Etten In a famous episode of the television show, The Twilight Zone, Henry Bemis, “a bookish little man whose passion is the printed page but who is conspired against by…a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of…
Blue Line, Emily Gray Tareila Ever since we marched with tube socks and Trapper Keepers into kindergarten, we have been urged to be who we want to be, to invent, to impress, to remember that the sky is the…
Rocks, Sara Sisun I’ve done enough packing to know that some things are easier to pack than others. Like books. I always pack my entire bookshelf in watery-brown, foursquare boxes, the kind you seal by bending an edge beneath another,…
Kangding Cigarette Man, Jeremy Nelson New Orleans: blues crackin’, hip swinging, finger-sucking, muckraking, turn the body into a song hot sweaty push you up against a wall humidity breathing onto you like a hot panting beast that can only be…
Plaid Sweater (1931) and Cape Coat (1982) by Grant Wood and Andrew Wyeth In Andrew Wyeth’s winter landscapes, Pennsylvania seems to groom itself with a cold gray tongue. Down it sweeps, over wide brown plains and farms, over towns and small cities. It…
Couch, Mirra Schwartz Stay up until five in the morning, having your heart broken from nine time zones away. Discover new and exciting forms of pain. Feel like you’ve had the skin peeled off your body and your insides scraped…
Xinnian Kuaile, Patrick Depuydt [Trigger Warning: Depictions Of Mild Gore] Don’t ask me nothing about nothing, I might just tell you the truth.Remember how they took her bloody clothes out of the car, ripped locks of hair: outlaw souvenirs to sit…
Chapel in Winter, Jenny Brum In maps, I look for you, In myth, in frames, but mirrors— I can watch you quietly, a subtle glance, then wayward fall against The gravity of spine, the trail of bones that builds…
Bridge, Cory Gans Some years past, her hair, cold like ice, soft like feathers, brushed past my poor hand. About the Author Daniel Chevalier, California State University Daniel Chevalier has recently been accepted to the nonfiction…
Untitled, Mae Ryan He talks of Relativity but half of Freundlich’s team is taken prisoner. The rest of us are left to gaze at the gray, condensing lid descending; those clouds overhead remind me of a time in Berlin.…
It’s The Simple Things, Allison McKenzie Again the squid that swallows light has no shadow. It flickers in and out of sight in the inexorably slow click of a zoetrope spinning itself out in pictures. A full day and…
From a Lighthouse, Zach Russo [Trigger Warning: Child Death Mention/Death Mention] Her little house smells like sulfur. Inside, it glows yellow, a combination of southern sun and outdated light fixtures. Her tap water tastes salty. My great-grandmother hates antiques. She is…
Trail of Shoes, Tina Horton The rehearsal dinner is at the Red Top Restaurant. We sit at three tables they had pushed together. Each place already has an ice water and the waitresses wait at either end with their…
