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Corpus Christi
Baptism, Mia Silvan-Grau god is just another old man laying claim to my body, with that divine right. he poses on my pale altar, anointing me with the knowledge that no matter where I touch myself he was there first. About the Author Alyssa Russell · Wheaton College Alyssa Russell is a…
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Testimony
Untitled (athlete), Katie Burleson [Trigger Warning: Brief mention of r*pe] The best way to remember is to be born again completely, slick with red and heat, til the cord is cut and the body stilled into awe. At trial, the mind re-buries itself, memories stacked like silver fish. One last drink for every hurt to carry.…
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In the North Room
Waiting, Shiya Wu You are sleeping on 400-count sheets colored fitfully red, your mattress flipped soft, your shades unworried, your lilies unanswered. The window is silent, as you are silent: it is September and you are in love with a dream of arrival. This year — you can smell it! — you know it…
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Childhood Sketch
Beach, Jacob Roosa Two bicycles, one twisted and its back wheel spinning crazily; one boy limps, the right half of his body supported by the other’s hip; we grow up separately and unavoidably flawed, in the way a tomato plant will bend in the rain until the main stalk snaps and small black ants emerge…
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Hollow Ground
Lagomorph Greetings, Natasha Change Everyonehere has a scarecrow smile, dried up and useless as the land. Makes my skin prickle, how these dead stalks like to hiss at closed windows. Bent and forked like devils’ tails, they scratch this hot itch behind my eyelids. Brand me with blistered hands. I know southwest summers, that…
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Body Project
BODIES!, Serena Hocharoen He told me my Body wasn’t his preference. Said it was: too big too loud too feminist and I could feel the slice of his tongue open up trenches in my flesh and skim over fault lines where past meets fat. I tried to change for him. Meet his preference.…
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No More Young Mother Smoking Cigarettes on the Porch
Suffocating Nature, Camelia Rojas My grandmother planted herself here among the arrowheads. She dug her husband out of the marsh— hands cupped as she washed him. They turned metal siding into brick. Within the lilies, she told me to let the earth stain my knees black like the grease of my grandfather’s plumbing hands.…
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Wings
Girlhood, Adira Bennett [Trigger Warning: Depictions of child neglect, self harm, and mental illness] 1 When I was a little girl, I had wings. I asked for them one day when we were in the dollar store. Mom already had a bunch of stuff in the cart, things we needed and things we probably didn’t. I…
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At Night (II)
A New World of Light, Jacob Fisher We went to an amusement park in downtown Calcutta, with fire-breathing macho men and an artist who wrote my name on a single grain of uncooked rice. There was a water slide with mats made of golfing turf, and no soft landing to break the fall. My…
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An Art (I)
A Meal of Crayons, Bryan Rubin My first art teacher was my uncle who was a boy. He, at fourteen, took my seven-year-old drawings of long-haired mermaids and flowers and handed me the backside of one of his exam papers, with red ink splattered on the surface. He then centered a chair in the room…
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All Over You Like Suburbia’s Lights
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Morgan Granosk Far above our paper houses, God spilled milk into the sky. Smeared clouds to make curd sunsets. Beautified that chalky orange against the white street lamps, as if to mimic a paradise, as if to say, “Never leave.” The candy dust from our pixie…
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Trigger Warning
Untitled, Zachary Vaughn [Trigger Warning: Depictions of mental illness] “Are you dead?” My best friend is bitter. She has become my masked enemy. When I wake up and decide today is a good day to plug my phone in, it immediately vibrates with messages that don’t give warning. Her texts are bombs and they chip at…
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Onward to Florence
Baptism, Mia Silvan-Grau There is no dignified way to walk through a green plastic kiddie pool filled with 11.2 gallons of room temperature tartar sauce. The first issue, of course, is the high viscosity of the material, which promises to plunge into its depths any traveler who does not restrict their gait to…
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Inlet at Kabutojima
Fog in Dingle, Emily Mui From the river something is stirring in a Pacific ultrablue, an edgeless ripple or a water bomb where the sea sinks into violet. The rower bends over his boat with its talon curve and cargo of grasses. His slender pole paints the water with motion, stirs the currents of harbor ships bent with wind, faceless as the gust of…
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The Creature of Caido Bay
Livelihood, Liza Ashley It began somewhere along the creek, where the bunch of us were playing around, each of us 13 or 14 years old, far too old to be doing this sort of thing. Still, we were having fun, pretending to be pirates and buccaneers as we made our way further along the stream…
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Swimming Lessons
Ocean, Miyuki Blois I remember the pool where I first learned to swim. Blue as the dark and wider than dream. I do not know if they threw me in. I do not remember if they said, “You cannot breathe water. You weren’t born fish.” – but I remember, last December, gasping under a vast…
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Blue Glass
Floral Bones, Raegan Jaeger [Trigger Warning: Depictions of abuse] Yesterday your mother mailed you nine of your baby teeth wrapped in plastic, no return address. I named you. Not your father. She kept one molar for her back pocket. In the first year of your life your anklebones were soft and your gums bled constantly. Your mother taught…
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Red Rock Township, c. 1850
War is Over, Ernest Volynec Before she was drowned in forty feet of silt and squalid water Red Rock was a post for river rats meandered up the muddy Des Moines, come to toe the line of east as far west as it had been, come to steal ponies and rob coaches and make business with the Fox who would…
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To the Lesser Knot
A Better World is Possible, Ernest Volynec For months, she wrote only of estuaries, which is how I knew she was leaving. It was February when she began packing— sweaters, her collection of dried leaves— pieces of her vanishing as she would if she stayed. At some point, I began to help. Folding her mother’s linens into the bag stowed…
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Just Read
The Funnies, Justine Newman When the power goes out, empty the refrigerator and put the perishables in a cooler full of ice. Assume that the bills weren’t paid and don’t ask questions. Light candles and do not speak. Time your showers, keep them short, ignore that they’re cold. When there isn’t enough food for…
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She Burns
Dazed, Jordan Thompkins It’s my job to stand guard while Moira smokes. It’s a job I take very seriously, not just because we’re teenagers smoking on school property, but because we’re teenagers smoking on church property, which I imagine the Sisters will see as the more damning sin of the two if we’re ever caught. We’ve…
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Things You Shouldn’t Say
Rome is the City of Echoes, Gabe Montesanti I hate my sister’s laugh. Laugh isn’t really even the right word for it, not really. I guess you could call it a cackle. Or a maniacal chortle? I hear it most often in the middle of the night, when the whole house…