Poetry
My Mother Loves & Desire | Liz Ahl
My Mother Loves My mother loves an underdog, she loves an old-fashioned donut, a cigarette, a Diet Sprite, a cigarette, a Diet Sprite. My mother loves the homeliest hometown weekly... Continue reading→
Winter Comes | CL Bledsoe
And we’re proud of ourselves for eating soup in season. Lentils and split pea, like our grandmothers, who always kept their clothes from splitting in time. When bad things happen,... Continue reading→
Marriage Repast | Amber Moss
The evening my mother’s second marriage died, she held her daughters' hands in the ocean and exhaled the habits of a wife – infidelity has no taste buds ..........the... Continue reading→
Danger | Pamela Murray Winters
Uncle Mark told me if it didn’t wear a hat, my hair would snap off. I liked courting some dangers, skidding down the hill to school right after soaking my... Continue reading→
my favorite thing about Black people is the way we take up space | Kailah Peters
laughing loudly in the aisles of a beauty supply store or yelling to a friend down the block our joy our rage our love always full volume always seeping from... Continue reading→
Upon Hearing the Magic 8 Ball Thing Has Twenty Sides Inside | James D’Agostino
Under an electron microscope everything’s a life raft factory dual-use school house Bauhaus birdbath cathedral. In the mirror though it’s mano a mano and that’s just the fists of the... Continue reading→
Waking Up in Florida & Déjà Vu | SM Stubbs
Waking Up in Florida Water from a sprinkler hits the window every twenty-seven seconds. A mockingbird rises and falls along the power lines running through the back yard. She sings,... Continue reading→
Quarantine, Early Days | Sarah Browning
Dryfork, WV So far, I am one of the fortunate ones Away in the hills, cocooned ..........by birdsong and love– Lichen pale and slow on the trees ..........just outside the... Continue reading→
Ghazalish, The Flood & Pain | Jessamyn Smyth
Ghazalish, The Flood Here is what I want you to know about the silence, still as death and colder: it moved from you to me, see, here in this bonecage... Continue reading→
Featured Essay
I’m the Guy Who (Almost) Killed the Guy Who (Almost) Killed Albert Einstein | James J. Patterson
The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament arrived in Washington, D.C., on November 15th, 1986. The participants had marched all the way from California to my hometown, the Capital of the Empire, to protest nuclear weapons. Under President Reagan, the war industry had shrugged off the negative image it had acquired during the Vietnam... Continue reading→
Prose
I Don’t Want to Be a Person’s My Person Because Persons Aren’t Very Good People | Exodus Oktavia Brownlow
The reason why I don’t like the saying my person is, well, try to use it in a song. It just doesn’t sound very nice at all to fall from... Continue reading→
The Light That Follows | Micah Chatterton
Once, drunk, two brothers decided to walk west until they reached the ocean. The older one was to be married seven days later to a kind, dark-haired woman, so the... Continue reading→
“Call Me” Duet | Alexander Burdette
(pt. 1) I think when I say “anything but ‘it,’” what I really mean is, “Make some choices so I can see if they work for me. Call me ‘he.’... Continue reading→
Skate Sundays | Jennifer Todhunter
We had these skateboard ramps to the left of the house, a mini ramp and a vert ramp and forty or so skaters every Sunday with their dogs and stoke... Continue reading→
Type Casting | Matthew E. Henry
“That’s some white people shit.” “What?” “Were all of the people who thought you were gay white?” “It’s not that they thought I was gay exactly…” “Not straight. Whatever. Were... Continue reading→
On a Monday, Mourning Doves | Michael Todd Cohen
The mournful cooing of the Mourning Dove is one of our most familiar bird sounds. European settlement of the continent, with its opening of the forest, probably helped this species... Continue reading→
“To live in one world and breathe in another” | Shiksha Dheda
CW: mental illness - title taken from Science girl(@gunsnrosesgirl3) tweet on 25/10/2022 They say that no other whale can hear his 52Hz cries of solitude. The blue whale... Continue reading→
The Revolution comes to the Midwest | Tommy Dean
Dakota leans against the stop sign, hand outstretched flipping off driver after driver. Kids in backseats meet his eye, and he smiles, beckons them to join him. The ones that... Continue reading→
Bump in the Night | Benjamin Woodard
A noise wakes us at 2 a.m., and when we open the door to Zoi’s bedroom, rather than spotting the five-year-old tucked under blankets, Stefani and I are greeted by... Continue reading→
Night of the Butterflies: A Broken Sestina | Tara Campbell
We stood around the bonfire, warming our hands at its glow. I could tell Samantha was fretting about something, but I didn’t ask, trusting her to tell us in her... Continue reading→