Precarious Weather

Rust Rorschach, Timothy Embertson The day I call the day my hair fell out, no hair actually fell out. Several bouquets simply gave   with a small tug, and slipped my mind  like thoughts. This wasn’t picking – the mud…

Categories: Poetry, Volume IX

Fox Studies

“junior year prom, mom had to unzip my dress because i was having a panic attack and couldn’t breathe”, Evelyn Staats On the day that Miles turns into a fox, I wake up sneezing. I lay curled on my side, facing…

Categories: Fiction, Volume IX

Reminiscing in the Land of Maple Syrup

An Ode to Breakfast, Emma Lassiter   I was scared, that day. The last time I had been scared in that house was when I was seven, and my big sister and I were sleeping over; but a thunderstorm woke me…

Categories: Nonfiction, Volume IX

Refrigerator Door

Dancer, Rose Horell and I can’t stop thinking  about how I’ve gotten so used to doing everything alone. so when I reached into the fridge for a dozen eggs for the week with my right leg out to catch a door…

Categories: Poetry, Volume IX

The Planets Move Without My Consent

Poppies and WD-40, Chloe Moulin Morning consists of showering the body, donning the clothing, assembling the self. I wrestle into a tee shirt, and oftentimes a collared shirt atop it, a sweater, a jacket. I like things that cover my neck.…

Categories: Nonfiction, Volume IX

The Churchyard Yew

Catacombes de Paris, Elle Griffiths Granny always told me that the yew is the tree of death, and that I should never go under it. In college I learned that every single part of the yew, except for the skin…

Categories: Fiction, Volume IX

ABC Haibun

Gas Station, Oscar Zenteno I was born in the room where my mother ate her first hamburger, the room where my father sat at her bedside, licking every crumb off  her collarbone—where, years later, we hung fish-shaped lanterns  on the…

Categories: Poetry, Volume IX

The Day It Happened

This Ain’t Belle’s Rose, Adriana Barker There came a winter that was not a winter, but the winter—the winter for which all the other winters had been waiting. The temperatures dropped to levels that broke every record and threatened to shatter…

Categories: Fiction, Volume IX

Communion

Molten Medium, Chloe Moulin He kisses his hand through my stomach I am a butterfly display, mounted under glass  —pinned with a needle—  pleasure with an exit wound. My stomach wound round the  puncture. Taxidermy angel, dying  a little death.…

Categories: Poetry, Volume IX

Entropy & the Irrefutable Nonsense of Being

Immersed, Abigail Nasari “The people or countries that seem to have the highest happiness index seem to embrace the chaos of being human, meaning they don’t pretend that life is anything other than chaotic and random.” -Andrew French BestFriend is…

Categories: Nonfiction, Volume IX

The Nature of Time

The Complexity of Detail, Olivia Offutt It rises And falls Like breath Between whispers It twists Turns upon itself forever  always will it swallow itself moment gorging on moment A snake eating its own tail turning always  to consume. About…

Categories: Poetry, Volume IX

complex / complexion / complexity

Opulent, Taharah Islam embodied stories pass me on the sidewalk & my head is a balloon / floating above / but I still cannot see through skulls to the thoughts & narratives inside / from my inflated position / I suffer…

Categories: Poetry, Volume IX

Love Language

Precious, Rose Horell   No one stays in Calcutta, India forever. Scan the headlines of the nearest copy of Calcutta Times or The Telegraph and you’ll almost certainly find an op-ed lamenting the brain drain. The education minister’s desperation is palpable…

Categories: Nonfiction, Volume IX

Marrow

Pink Creek, Louise Rossiter Laurel’s father was fired from his job at the end of August, a sure way to sour the remains of an already over-ripe summer. Its heat had been unbearable, with not even the small relief of…

Categories: Fiction, Volume IX

The Pufferfish Limerick

Demonology, Jack Hoye There once was a man from Nantucket  Who ate a pufferfish straight from a bucket. He said with a grin As he wiped off his chin, “The tetrodotoxin from this fish will bind to my voltage-gated sodium channels,…

Categories: Poetry, Volume IX

Wild, Rough Blue

Haku, Anna Hiltner My sister and I grew up between golden hills that glared against the rough blue sky of Tahoe country. Mom and Dad sat us down in a too-small,  too-expensive California home to tell us  we were moving…

Categories: Poetry, Volume IX

Elise

Rose-Covered Glasses, Margaret Wright   I know her like she’s mine. Little sister, little child, little rhyme. We float in the gray-between; one of my hands holds her as a sister while the other tucks her to sleep, maternal lullabies and…

Categories: Nonfiction, Volume IX